Lost in Translation Rewrite (Part 1 of Alex Harbor Series)
by TelevisionOverload
Summary: Avengers AU. Canon-ish, but with Alex. Re-do of Lost in Translation. It's the same concept, same general story, but my writing and formatting improved a great deal. I took the other one down. Please review this story, if you can. I don't have a lot time to work on these, so if you like it can you tell me, in a review, so I know. (This story is finished, Part 2 is up)
1. Journal Entry 1

**Please read this Author's Note:**

**SUMMARY IS THE SECOND LINE FROM THE BOTTOM**

**This is my complete rewrite of Lost in Translation. At the moment of me putting this in the Doc Manager, I'm on Chapter 8 of the story, so like the original story, I'm going to write this as I go. It's easier on me that way, so please remember that when it takes me along time to get this finished.**

**I had a lot of trouble continuing You call this normal? (Iron Man 3 FanFic) The story I had envisioned in my head had evolved faster than the one I published had, so I decided that it would be a good idea to rewrite it the way I wanted it to be. **

**Another problem was my characterization of Alex. Alex wasn't the original OC for this story. I went through many different ideas who she could be, each time changing the personality a lot, and that lead to her being all over the place. Once I finally realized what her personality was going to be, I was 2/3 of the way through You call this normal? and I realized that I had no inspiration for the story anymore.**

**The past year has been pretty rough as well. My grandma died of cancer, I switched to Private School, my parents are expecting more than I can deliver from everything from chores to grades, I wasn't prepared for private school, and I've barely been in contact with any of my old friends (Except for Carmen, the one who I addressed repeatedly in my author's notes).**

**I'm planning on continuing this series all the way through Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Captain America 2, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. One thing I would like help with is the titles of these stories.**

**Lost in Translation: The Avengers (Standing title no matter what)**

**Taken From Translation: The New Normal of Alex Harbor (Standing title no matter what)**

**You call this Normal? (Help me think of a new title, I hate this one)**

**Oh, and due to a review asking questions on my original story whenever I stated her IQ of 193. This time I made it a little clearer what I meant. In case you just want to know the story behind it, I'll go ahead and tell you:**

**Alex knows herself that she most likely doesn't have an IQ of 193, but has a Photographic and Eidetic Memory, and can remember almost everything from 1-current because of how good her memory is. Mostly she uses her memory to help her study and learn how to do new stuff and that lead to her school thinking that she cheated at everything and they paid for private testing.**

**I put Alex (and what I planned for her) though several Mary Sue tests. One of the briefest ones was:**

_Alexandra Harbor is nothing like you. She isn't really very cool: she blends into crowds, she hangs out on the fringes at parties, and wearing shades after dark makes her run into things. She may have sometimes thought that she was special, or destined for greater things, but probably dismissed the idea as a fantasy. She's come in for her share of hurt, but gotten off with minor damage. And she's gotten no slack from you. _

_In general, you care deeply about Alexandra Harbor, but you're smart enough to let her stand on her own, without burdening her with your personal fantasies or propping her up with idealization and over-dramatization. Alexandra Harbor is a healthy character with a promising career ahead of her._

**By the way, since I was 11 when I wrote this and 13 when I posted it, I named 2 of my characters after Shake it up characters. Then I realized how stupid that was. Now you'll see Dina still, because that's supposed to be short for Regina in my story, and Deuce turned into Robert, because that was his full name in my story. I thought it was stupid that I kept the names, but I didn't know how to go back and change them without making her just randomly start calling him something differently.**

**Summary (As I promised):**

**Alexandra 'Alex' Harbor is a kid who's lived a hard life. Her life, though it has been far from ideal or normal, is getting better for her. She thinks that she's got the hang of everything, despite being an 11 year old living by herself in an apartment. Then summer comes, all of her friends leave out of family obligations, and she's stuck in her apartment in the rain. Sometime during the storm, she realizes that something's wrong but has no idea what it is. Once the storm ends, on her way to see a movie, she finds out that nothing she knows is right anymore. As she goes through the motions, trying to learn her way around the new world and the new life she leads, she realizes how screwed up everything really is, and that's the world's not about to go easy on her.**

**Please go back and read the author's note if you didn't, it explains a lot.**

**EDIT: Sorry, forgot to put the disclaimer. I don't know if it really matters, but I'll do it anyway. Keep in mind this is the disclaimer for the entire story.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own MARVEL. Or The Avengers. I don't own most of the characters. I own Alex, her family, and her friends (Not really, most of her friends are based off my friends/named after my friends because I'm not good with names and I didn't plan on them playing a big part in this story). I wish I owned MARVEL. Because Alex would be a character, and then I could make sure everything happened exactly how I wanted it to.**

**2nd EDIT: This is more for myself than for you guys. I need to put this in a place where I'll remember. **

**Alex is 4 years younger than Robert and 3 years younger than Dina.**

**So in Lost in Translation the ages are: **

**Alex: 11**

**Dina: 14**

**Robert: 15**

**If I do that correctly, by the time I get up to date in the timeline, in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. the ages should be:**

**Alex: 14/15**

**Dina: 17/18**

**Robert: 18/19**

**(Sorry about that, I just knew I'd forget if I didn't put it here, because I switch documents when I make another story)**

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May 7th, 2012

2:45 pm

Sitting in my living room while watching Doctor Who

Status: Bored out of my mind, lonely, and ready to flush my stupid Parrot down the toilet

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Dear Stupid Journal my cousin's girlfriend gave me,

Does anybody want to take a Parrot named Martha who's dumber than a brick off my hands? The pet store won't take her back and I don't know what to do with her.

This kind of thing is odd. I mean I've never had a journal before; I never wanted to have a journal. Then Dina noticed that I had a lot of pent up anger and told me that I needed to vent my emotions. Considering the fact that she told me it was either a therapist or the journal, I chose the journal. I don't need to make another therapist go crazy.

Dina think's that I need the journal more than she does, and basically forced it on me the last time she came to visit me. When I say forced, I mean she threw it into my room as she was leaving then sprinted down the hall; everybody I know is kind of crazy. I don't know where Dina gets her ideas, or why she refuses to listen to a single thing I say.

I kind of get her reasoning; I can't open up to people. I've tried to open up to my friends, my family, and even to Dina; but I just can't do it. There's too much and I don't even know where to start. All trying to open up did was give me more and more anxiety. Ok, getting a text from Dina right now. It says, **Alex you better use that journal or you'll be sorry**. Sometimes she scares me.

I'm going to start at the original source of my anxiety; My Father. I don't talk to my Father a lot; he lives in a different house. He lives in a different country 99% of the time. His name is Mackenzie 'Mad Man' James Harbor; the con man and runner up for **Worst Dad in History**. The person who wins that title is his brother Trent Harbor, who is also winning **Worst Uncle in History**. He hates children, life, and basically anything that breathes. It's surprising that he's had 3 kids, only 2 of which are living (Extremely long and complicated story that I can't explain at the moment and I would rather not explain).

I can't really complain about Daddy issues, since I don't have to live with mine. I feel bad for my cousins because they have to deal with him on a day to day basis. I mean, my Dad still sends me stuff and sends me money, but I really just want to see him more often. I see him maybe every 6 months and that is usually the best day of my life because he tries to make up for everything he missed as quickly as he can.

Most of my cousins, and there are a lot of them, live with their Moms. I don't really know where my Mom is, so I spend most of my days with my cousins and their Moms during any vacation. I don't mind that much, since I never got to know her and my aunts are really nice. Sometimes I wonder why they married into the sleazebag Harbor family.

Ok, this is all over the place, but I actually feel better.

When I was 7, my Dad had to go away on business. He told me not to tell anybody and to stay in my apartment the entire time unless it involved getting food or going to school. He told me it was only going to be a few days; a few days later I got a call saying that he was sorry and that I couldn't contact him, but to let him contact me. A few days turned into a week, a week turned into several, several turned into months.

Eventually the landlady found out and called Child Services. That's when my Dad FINALLY showed up and they went away without any trouble. Then he and the landlady had a little chat. He told me that he wasn't going to be able to live with me anymore, that he was putting me in danger. He said that I was to tell nobody except for the landlady that I was living by myself, that I was to invite nobody to my apartment, that I wasn't allowed to participate in anything outside of school, and that I was only allowed to contact family to find out where he was.

My family is made up of Con Men and crazy people. I can name any person in my family and tell you what position they do and what job they have. My family formed what they call **The Seven Swords**. 6 of those people are my Father and Uncles, the other is Don Rio Garcia; who just happens to be Dina's Father and honestly one of the nicest people I know.

I forgot to mention my name. I'm Alexandra Grace Harbor; I go by Alex or Alexandra the Great when I do something stupid in front of my friends. I've gone by Alex since I was 9, since 'The Incident' (Not as bad as it sounds, just strange and hard to explain). I might tell you what 'The Incident' is later on. I apparently have an IQ of 193, but I highly doubt that it's that much. But I do have a Photographic and Eidetic Memory.

Here's the thing about my IQ. I highly doubt that its 193. I have a photographic memory, eidetic memory, and I have a very logical mind. I think that's why I did so well on those tests. Whatever I see, I remember it, and I remember every little detail about it. I can tell you exactly what my Dad's room looks like off the top of my head, and I haven't even been in there since I was 7. I can tell you how many problems were on my 2nd grade spelling tests. I can tell you what the words were on my second grade spelling test.

Studying and school has always come naturally to me, my crazy screwed up memory made it to where I just had to flip through the book and do some practice problems and I'd know exactly how to do it. Hacking basically came as second nature once I realized what I needed to do and how to get my hands on what I needed. After that point, once I had and knew how to use the equipment, I knew exactly how to hack a firewall.

It's not that I don't have to try in school, I still do, but I don't have to try as hard as everybody else. People think I cheat because I do good in all of my subjects. I've had my schools test me for everything. My school even paid for private IQ testing because it freaked them out how well I could remember stuff and retain information.

I live with a dog I found when I was 7, when he followed me home from school; 2 cats my Aunt got me for my 11th birthday, and a Parrot I want to murder. My dog's name is Buster, and he's my best friend. My cats are named Little Girl and WALL-E, thanks to my friend Carmen's little sister. My Parrot's name is Martha because I let my friend name it before I had watched Doctor Who.

Speaking of Doctor Who; it, and Marvel are my life. I really don't have a life, and I'm pretending that I'm ok with that. At first, my friends were obsessed with Doctor Who, now I'm obsessed with Doctor Who at a level that they have yet to reach.

My Parrot, thank you Morgan and Jacob, only says 3 phrases. Those phrases, usually in this order, are 'Fuck me', 'Screw You', and 'Damn Bird'. Those are the very reasons that I hate her; well, that and the fact that she's extremely hostile and aggressive. I tried several times, and the pet store refuses to take her back.

Ok, so its summer and I just got out of school a week ago. I don't know why our summer starts earlier, but for some reason it does. When I got out of school, I found out that all of my friends were going on vacation and I was going to be alone all summer long. My cousin Robert gets to go to Mexico to visit family with his Mother and sister Jamie; his Mom's Hispanic. Dina gets to go visit her Father. My friend Morgan gets to go to Israel to visit family. My friends Carmen, Kaiann, and Dani get to go to the same summer camp. My friends Abby and Mary get to go to the same different summer camp. Maddie and Gabby are god knows where. Katie's visiting family somewhere. Tyler's with his family in Vegas. Brendan's somewhere in Chicago at the moment.

Almost the very minute I got out of school, it started to drizzle. Then once I got home, it started to rain. Then, once everybody was gone, it started to pour. Now, I'm trapped in my building in the middle of the pouring rain. FOR A WEEK; it's been raining all week, nobody can go outside and all I've done is play on my laptop and fight a parrot. Now, there are scratch marks all over my kitchen, my cabinets, my arms, and she somehow managed to get all of the stuffing out of a couch cushion.

I looked outside, in the pouring rain, and found out that I can't even focus on the New York skyline. It looks fuzzy and I keep having to wipe like 20 layers of fog off my windows. The rain is starting to creep me out a bit. It won't stop raining and I can't get my TV to work right anymore. Oh, great now the internet's going out too. And I now the lights are flickering; just great.

I need to go, my power is starting to go out. And now the power's out. I'll write again later, maybe something interesting will happen this summer. Now I need to go check the fuse box since the landlady can't work a light switch let alone a fuse box.

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\- Alexandra Grace Harbor

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**Please go and read the author's note at the top if you didn't.**

**Please review and let me know how you like the rewrite. And please tell me which one you like better, original story or new story (At the moment). **

**Keep in mind, since it is government agents and adults interacting with an 11 year old, characterization might be a little off because and part of which will be intentional as in they don't know how to react to Alex's personality or intelligence (most likely the first one because she's an 11 year old who acts like a teenager purposefully).**


	2. Chapter 1: The Storm

**This chapter is going to be more or less the same. As I've written up to chapter 8, I'm going to go ahead and say that around Chapter 2 it starts to branch off and from Chapter 3-Chapter 8 it's basically completely different.**

**I changed it to where she ran into Tony Stark, because I thought that would be more likely than running into Steve Rogers. I thought it would be better if she met Tony Stark, freaked out, gauged who was less likely to call the cops on her, and went there. Since in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it showed that his apartment was bugged, I thought that would work better.**

* * *

**Chapter 1: The Storm**

I now hate rain. Officially hate it. Rain sucks; it's loud, wet, and horrible to live in. When I had to spend 2 weeks in Mexico with my cousins and Dina, I thought I'd never see rain and when I did I couldn't get enough of it. Now I can barely even stand it. There are flashflood warnings everywhere. The storm rains were backed up beyond belief; almost nobody in New York left their homes. It was all over the news; **Endless rain traps residents in their homes**. Every time I looked out my window, it seemed to get worse and worse.

For those 7 long days of the endless flood, I was a hermit camped out in my living room who lived off Honey Nut Cheerios, Ice Cream, and Red Bull. Word to the wise, don't give hyperactive cats Red Bull. That only ends in disaster. It was like a Scooby Doo cartoon where you see the legs spinning. I didn't know that animals could move that fast.

I was camped out in my living room, staring out the window, like I could make it stop raining. Of course, it didn't, so I was just acting like a crazy person. Nothing was working my way. I couldn't even go see The Avengers, which had come out on May 4th. Like a normal kid, I tried to call my friends. Nobody answered. I tried texting my friends. Nobody answered. I tried E-Mailing my friends. Once again, nobody answered. I could understand that, they were busy. What I couldn't understand was why they didn't answer after they were done with whatever they were doing.

"Fuck me." Martha said, causing me to throw my shoe at her cage. I loved animals to death, but I could not deal with her and I didn't know how to get rid of her. This was the bird that could open her own cage. I somehow managed to forget that and had to retreat with my stuff into my room while Buster ran and cowered underneath my desk.

"Wimp." I muttered as I slammed the door. My room was basically what any kid would want. A bed on stilts, with a recliner and a desk with a ancient desktop underneath it, a TV on the other side of the room, on a track I built so I could move it up and down depending whether or not I was on the bed or not. It took me like a year to set it up.

For a few hours I was attempting to get my laptop, and the desktop to connect to the internet. I was using websites like FanFiction, Wattpad, DeviantART, and Tumblr. None of them would load. I gave up and tried to connect to the news website, and it didn't work. I couldn't connect to a single thing, and my Wi-Fi was fine. I just chalked it up to rain messing with the signals and gave up. My TV was still screwing up and I didn't feel up to using Netflix or Hulu.

"I hate rain." I said to Buster, flopped down on the recliner. He stared at me as if trying to give me an answer. "Sometimes I think I'm crazy. I'm talking to a dog about the fact that I talk to a dog." He just stared at me. That was one of the good things about dogs; they didn't judge you no matter how crazy you were. Petting a dog, one as calm and collected as Buster, was enough to calm me down at times I was pissed off or scared.

At some point, I judged my living room safe and returned to claim the couch. I was able to wrestle Martha back into the cage and locked her in the bathroom closet with a blanket over the cage. She really pissed me off sometimes. Buster watched me as I did it.

"Why did I buy her again?" I asked. He barked. "I don't know either buddy. Now let's try and watch some TV."

We did just that, sat down and got the TV to work. I was having fun, just watching TV, until I made the mistake of looking out the window again. As I looked out the window, I noticed something odd. I slowly rose to my feet and walked over to the window to get a better look. I used my sleeve to rub the fog off and stared. I still couldn't see the skyline well. As I stared at it, I realized that it looked different. It felt as if something was wrong, the chill you felt when something felt wrong.

"What the hell is that?" I asked myself as I stared out the window.

The skyline looked misshapen and slowly changing. The feeling was only topped by the feeling that somebody was watching. I was a naturally paranoid person, and that feeling only made things worse. The one thing running through my mind was, **Danger**.

My breath quickened as I grew more and more paranoid. I slammed my curtain closed and nearly dived for the couch. I wrapped myself up in all of my blankets in an attempt to calm myself down. Buster pressed himself to my side and started licking my face. Usually my dog was enough to calm me down, but not then. I was too paranoid and too confused. I closed my eyes tightly and prayed that the storm would be over by the time I woke up.

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**Please review the story, not reviewing makes me not want to add chapters.**

**My original story started off too close to One Step Ahead. But unlike Jackie, Alex doesn't know squat, because she hated the idea of spoiling the movie. Then this happened.**


	3. Journal Entry 2

**I tried to keep this one and the next Chapter pretty much the same, but I changed a lot of dialogue, since I changed who Alex was basically.**

**This Alex, the new version, has a much better outlook on life, she knows that things don't go her way, but thinks that she can find a way to change it. She doesn't really get the 'Life sucks' personality until after New York.**

**Her relationship with her Father is basically 10 times better than it was. Her relationship with her Uncle is basically the one that her relationship with her Father had been previously. I had noticed that there were too many inconsistencies with her relationship with her Father.**

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May 8th, 2012

3:00 am

Hiding in my room

Status: Scared shitless

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Dear Journal,

Hello stupid journal, like my Status says, I'm scared shitless right now. I bet you want to know why I'm scared shitless and why I'm hiding in the room I barely use.

Here's the reason why: I have almost no idea what's going on in the outside world.

It hasn't helped any that they skyline still seems as if it's slowly changing. It got to the point where I really thought that the skyline was changing. I can't even look out the window anymore, I'm too scared to after I saw that. Why am I writing this at 3 am? Because right now I'm hiding under my covers with a flashlight while Buster's napping on my recliner and the cats are in his dog bed.

Late last night, I woke up, maybe like 1 am. I decided to go get my mail for the week. When I went downstairs, I saw that my Landlady was still awake. That was odd, because she was in her 60s and I usually didn't see her after 8 pm. I went over to talk to her, but when I asked her what was going on, she froze in place. I panicked, grabbed my mail, and ran all the way up the stairs and locked every door and window in my apartment and shoved a dresser in front of my front door.

Then I tried to start watching TV, and I couldn't find anything I wanted to watch, so I went to grab a movie. Half of my movies are missing and so are half of the comics I owned. Everything Marvel disappeared. I looked through my dresser and found out that all of my Marvel shirts were gone too. I thought somebody had broken into my apartment, but there were no signs.

I have no friends I can call. It's 3 am and nobody picks up anyway. It wasn't like they'd believe me about any of this anyway. I wanted to E-Mail or call somebody, but nobody could. I'm starting to wonder whether or not the world's gone entirely insane, so I'm making a Catalog of everything.

**_Note:_**

_Subject seems to be in a haze. When asked a question she froze up. The papers stopped coming and the mail is only from the day the rain started to get worse. The skyline is hazy and it's getting too foggy to see outside. At most you can see the simple outline of the skyline. The skyline seems to slowly change and something's wrong with New York. So far I have refrained from searching for a reason to all of this confusion, yet if this continues much longer, I will search for a reason as to why this is going on._

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\- Alexandra Grace Harbor

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**Please review this story, even if it's just a 'That was good' or a 'That sucked'. My fear for bad reviews has improved a lot, and all I'm looking for now is constructive criticism since I want to be a writer and need advice. **

**On that note, please remember what I stated here as I am attempting to write a book, so there may be times when I neglect this story, but I do try and check for reviews often.**


	4. Chapter 2: The Aftermath

**Journal Entry 1, Chapter 1, Journal Entry 2, and Chapter 2 don't change much.**

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**Chapter 2: The Aftermath**

I didn't have to search around for anything. It cleared up the next morning. I was ecstatic, despite the fact that you could see that Central Park was all mud from my building. I promised Buster that I'd take him for a walk as soon as I got to see the movie. I was literally jumping for joy when I realized that it had stopped raining.

"YES!" I all but yelled. Buster started jumping around as well, but I thought it was because I was happy so he was happy.

"I promise, we'll go for a walk when I get back." I had said. I grabbed my backpack off the chair and ran out the door. I locked it and ran down the stairs; I had an issue with elevators. Since none of the people I wanted to see it with were in town, or in the state, I decided that I would just go on my own and have a good time by myself.

When I got to the movie theater, I quickly surveyed the board for the movie times. The Avengers wasn't on a single one of them. I checked my phone on the theater's website. It said nothing about The Avengers either. I was confused, but I went into the line anyway.

"Excuse me sir, are you playing The Avengers?" I asked, trying to be polite.

"Um…The Avengers?" He asked. I nodded.

He searched through his database, looking crazier than a monkey doing a math problem. He took a long time to search through it, and once he started making faces, I had to force myself not to laugh. The people behind me were laughing as well. But, once he finished, he looked at me annoyed.

"Are you making this up?" He asked.

"Um…no, why?" I asked, starting to get really confused.

"Because the last time there was a movie called The Avengers, it was in the late 90s and it was a British film. Are you sure that you didn't get the date on that mixed up?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. The new movie. The Avengers." I said again. He sighed and rolled his eyes, as if it was a chore to help me.

"I'll look again." He said. After a few more minutes, he looked up once again and rolled his eyes. "There is no movie in the United States titled The Avengers." He said with an eye roll.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"I've checked twice. I'm pretty sure." He said, and I was pretty close to losing it.

"You've got to be kidding me." I said.

"I'm not, can you leave? You're holding up the line of people that know what they're talking about." He snapped. Before that, I would have left without getting mad, but I couldn't help it.

"You know what. Screw it. I'll leave." I said, walking off before I made an embarrassment of myself in front of all of those people.

I made a point in jogging back to the building, in an attempt of calming myself down. When I got there, I was nervous as I found the lobby empty. For some reason, that made me feel even more nervous. I grabbed my mail and took the elevator. I pressed the elevator button repeatedly until the elevator door open. Once inside, I pressed the 10th floor button and pressed **Door Close** until the door closed. On my way up, the enclosed space only made it worse.

Once at my floor I was about to kick in my door when it wasn't unlocking fast enough. I locked it back and ran into my room. I grabbed my laptop and google searched The Avengers. Nothing related to Marvel showed up, which confused me.

"What the hell's going on?" I asked. Buster barked and I just stood up and grabbed Buster's leash off its hook. "Never mind. I'm being paranoid. Let's go to the park." His grin looked at me like **'What are we waiting for?'**. I walked right out the door and into the hallway. As I walked down the stairs, I wondered what was wrong with me, or if it wasn't me.

Almost as soon as I stepped outside, I noticed what was wrong with the skyline. Where the MetLife building used to be, I saw a building with the Stark Industries Logo. I shook my head, thinking since it was far away and since I had glasses, that I was mistaken. I kept telling myself that I would have noticed it earlier, despite the fact that I didn't look up.

"How would I not notice something like that?" I muttered to myself. The building itself looked different, as if it had been completely redone.

To test my theories, which were based on nothing, I walked over to the newspaper stand, where I usually got my newspaper. I skimmed over the table and murmured a hello to Martian, the man who worked there. On the cover of the newspaper was a picture of Tony Stark, so I bought the paper, planning on reading it when I got home. But then I turned around to hear people talking about Tony Stark upgrading his building and I couldn't wait. I turned back around to the stand and waited for Martin to finish speaking so I could ask him a question.

"Hey, um, Martin…do you know what the news with Tony Stark is?" I said. He acted like it was a normal question, but it felt weird to call him Tony Stark instead of Robert Downey Jr. but Martin nodded and started to talk.

"Oh yeah. He's planning to make his building run on clean energy." Martin said.

"Thank you Martin, see you soon." I waved and walked off. I wasn't sure that I would see him soon. I was thinking how that day couldn't get any weirder, but the second that thought came into my mind something caught my eye as I walked through the park with Buster. There was a giant billboard, on the side of a building, that had been an Avengers poster. But it wasn't there. In its place was a poster that had Tony Stark on it.

**Stark Industries for a Better Tomorrow**

It sounded like something you'd find in EPCOT. Yeah, I went to Disney World once. The picture was at the center of the billboard, big enough for everybody to see. Nothing seemed plausible anymore, and nobody was acting normal. Stark Tower was in the skyline and billboards with Tony Stark were plastered everywhere.

I quickly searched through my windbreaker's pocket to find my iPhone and scrambled to pull it out. I started snapping pictures as I walked. While I was busy watching the poster, as if it would disappear if I looked away for a second, I was still walking. That was a dumb decision and I rammed into somebody in the park.

"Aw, shit." I muttered as I hit the sidewalk. I reached out to grab my phone. The Otter Box, which was supposed to protect it, had cracked and so had my screen. I was ok with that, since it still turned on. I slowly stood up and pulled Buster back. "I'm sorry sir; I wasn't looking where I was going." I said as politely as I could, despite the fact that I was in pain. I dusted off my pants and felt lucky that I didn't end up in the mud.

"It's alright kid." A voice said; a voice that I recognized. I looked up, to look him in the face. It was the man on the freaking poster.

"Oh dear lord you're Tony Stark." I said. I just went ahead and called him Tony Stark since everything and everyone was telling me to call him that. "I'm so sorry." I said. I was trying to gracefully get myself out of an awkward situation. Yet, despite the fact my middle name is Grace; I'm not very good at it.

"Hey, kid, it's alright." He said, holding up his hands.

"T—This isn't right." I said, though it was mostly to myself. I couldn't help it, I was talking without thinking, and whenever I started doing that it meant that I wasn't going to stop for a while or at least until I majorly messed something up.

"What are you talking about?" He asked, but I was already talking over him.

"This isn't right. You aren't real. You're a fictional character. You're a movie character." I was rambling to myself a mile a minute.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

"Shit." I said when I realized what I accidentally told him. He reached out to put his hand on my shoulder, but I shot my arm back and took off running.

"Hey kid!" He yelled after me, but I continued to run. I screwed up, and I screwed up bad.

I didn't stop running until I reached my building. I slowed to a stop outside my building, trying to catch my breath. No matter how hard I'd tried, I just couldn't catch my breath. I sat down on the front steps to calm myself down.

"I'm losing my mind." I said, running a hand over my face. Buster whimpered and nudged my arm until I moved it. Then he started licking my face until I fell over. "G—Good dog." I said quietly. He continued to nudge me until I finally stood up. I was only feeling worse than I did during the storm; I kind of wished that it didn't stop.

As I trudged into the building, I decided to stop and check my mail again. I flipped through it while standing there. Bill, bill, Lego Magazine, Dog Magazine, tabloid with Tony Stark's face on it. For some reason, I was close to freaking out again.

"Are you alright Alexandra? Is something wrong?" My Landlady asked. I turned to face her.

"I'm alright. It's not bad news; it's just some weird tabloid." I said unconvincingly, "Sorry if I worried you i—it's just some weird article." I said all of that without taking my eyes off of the tabloid. She nodded, probably thinking it was some normal kid thing, and walked off.

I took off down the hall and ran up the backstairs. I rushed past all of my neighbors without so much as a hello. I fumbled with the lock and yanked Buster inside. I locked the door back, threw everything except the tabloid behind the couch, and pushed the dresser in front of the door once again.

I started running around the apartment, trying to remember where my Dad hid his gun. When I found it I loaded it and slammed it down beside my laptop on my coffee table. I jumped over the couch to sit down, almost landing on Little Girl. Buster climbed onto the couch to remind me that I didn't unleash him. I ripped the leash off and threw it over the couch where it hit the wood floor with a _clink_. He nuzzled his head under my arm as I turned to my laptop and opened it. I turned on my laptop, waited nervously as it loaded, typed in my password, and opened a window. I started typing into the search bar.

"Something's not right." I said to Buster, "Something's really not right." At least I knew what was going on; I wasn't in _my_ New York anymore.

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**Review! Please?**


	5. Journal Entry 3

**This is basically a reworded verison of the same thing, plus her reasoning as to why she had to go talk to Steve Rogers. In my original it was because she ran into him, in this one it's because she doesn't think that he'll call the cops on her.**

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May 11th, 2012

2:00 am

Hiding in my room

Status: Confused and pissed

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Dear Investigation Journal,

I'm starting to understand what's going on, despite the fact that with the current scientific evidence proved that none of this was possible. But in this world, it is possible. I've gathered as much evidence as I could.

**Evidence #1:** There is no FanFiction about The Avengers/Any Marvel movie

**Evidence #2: **Wattpad is also the same way

**Evidence #3:** There is no fan art for The Avengers/Any Marvel movie

**Evidence #4:** There is nothing on Tumblr about The Avengers/Any Marvel movie (btw half of Tumblr is now missing)

**Evidence #5:** All of my merchandise and memorabilia is gone

**Evidence #6:** Half of my clothing is gone

Then I decided to look up individual articles about Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Loki, Thor, and Nick Fury. I also looked up Joss Whedon; where it mentioned nothing about The Avengers in his movie credits (Buffy and Firefly are still there). When I typed in 'The Avengers Movie', all that came up was some British movie and TV show. I could find nothing about The Avengers anywhere. The comics were gone, the comic book company was gone; I found nothing on Stan Lee or any of the other writers I could remember.

**For Tony Stark:** I found articles dated back to 2008 "Tony Stark is Iron Man"

**For Bruce Banner:** I found articles dated back to 2008 "Accident at Laboratory"

**For Captain America:** I found articles dated back to the 40s "Captain America lost in battle"

**For Hawkeye:** I found articles about the M*A*S*H character.

**For Black Widow:** I found articles about the Spider

Speaking of spiders, I looked up Spiderman; nothing whatsoever. There was also no Fantastic Four, Guardians of the Galaxy, or Power Pack. Nothing was there. I looked for anybody remotely related to Marvel that I could think of, and found nothing. I just kept telling myself that I had finally cracked from the pressure of being Alexandra Harbor. There is a lot of pressure from being Alex Harbor; being a kid is hard enough, school is hard enough, adding crazy con men to the mix only makes things worse.

I spent a while trying to figure out who was less likely to call the cops on me. Tony Stark would most likely have the cops on their way the second I entered the building. Bruce Banner was god knows where hiding. I wasn't about to turn myself over to S.H.I.E.L.D; so that left one person. Captain America, Steve Rogers; he seemed harmless enough. Considering the fact that I wasn't ready to turn myself over to S.H.I.E.L.D, _but_ I needed to talk to somebody to try and get help, he was probably the best option I had. Turning myself into S.H.I.E.L.D would probably be my only option, but there was no guarantee that they'd believe me either.

I'd just have to risk it, and find one of them. That would be Steve Rogers, and I'm going to have to figure out how I'm supposed to find him. Ok, so that's easier than I thought. All I had to do was type in **Steven Rogers, New York City**, and he showed right up. I found a street name, an apartment building, a floor number, a room number, and how long he'd lived there. I was basically invading his privacy; he didn't really have anything to do with it.

But I had to do something; it felt wrong just sitting here in my living room. There was a world that was so much bigger waiting for me, a world that I had waited for my entire life. I couldn't just sit here and sit on the sidelines while something big went down in my hometown. I had to do something to be helpful; who cares if I'm just 11. I will figure this out, I'm already more mature than I should be. I'm already stronger and smarter than I should be. Why don't I try and put that to use? Why don't I try and do something good with my life? I don't want to be known as a con man's daughter my entire life. So, I'm going to have to figure this out on my own.

Now I know how Captain America felt, waking up in 2011 New York. It was New York, the same city that he'd lived in his entire life, but it wasn't _his _New York. Right now, the skyline's stopped changing. I can think straight, I can pay attention to what's going on fully now. I know that something's wrong, and that's all I need. There's Stark Tower and OsCorp, where there used to be entirely different buildings.

Should I stay? Should I feel like I shouldn't? What's the right answer? Is it worth it staying here? Is it worth it going back? What's the difference? That's all I can think about right now. I have my stuff; well most of it. I have my apartment. I have my crazy family; I wish most of them stayed behind. I'll have my friends when they finally show up again. I can stay here, in the city I grew up in, with my favorite characters in the same city as I am.

I think I'm on coffee overload right now; I haven't slept since before I ran into Tony Stark. I need to sleep, so I can think about this better. I'll probably not write again for a while, but when I do, I'll write about what happened. Clearly nothing's happened yet.

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\- Alexandra Grace Harbor

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**Please review.**


	6. Chapter 3: The world against me

**I toned down the fight a lot. Originally Alex basically made her fight her, and I was portraying Alex as the victim. In this version, Alex knows what she did was wrong. I explained that it was basically an instinct for Alex to attack her.**

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**Chapter 3: The World against me**

I thought about it over and over again when I woke up. I kept thinking, "What would it change? If I stayed? If I left?" If I left this city, the way it is now, I'd probably keep wondering, what if. I had a once and a lifetime opportunity in front of me; and there was no guarantee that there would even be a way for me to get home.

"Should I go and try and find somebody?" I asked as I paced around my kitchen. I was talking to Buster, which was something I did when I was stressed. "Should we just stay here, and pretend that we don't know anything about this?" Of course, he didn't answer.

I kept on thinking everything over. Something changed during that storm. I don't just mean the world, I mean in me. Back then, I didn't care. I didn't care what people thought, I didn't care what people did, I didn't care how much trouble I got in. I just didn't care about anything except for myself and my friends. Now, everything's being put into perspective and I realize how stupid that was. How stupid, _I _was.

Back then, I would have given anything to be where I was now. Back then, all I could think was **The world is against me, the world hates me.** I thought, "This will make me happy, this will make me actually feel like I'm worth something." It's not as great as I thought it was, it just feels horrible. But, back then, I actually had reasons as to why I wanted to leave. And, back then, was 3 weeks ago.

_Aubrey Peters, a girl in my class, was one of the worst and most vile people I ever had the displeasure of knowing. She was a tormenter to me and to my friends until that one day. She was the least favorite kid to the teachers, and an overall troublemaker. Not to mention a complete and utter bitch. The teachers hated her because she walked around like the world owed her something; and that made the rest of the class try and avoid her the best they could. Everybody tried to stay out of Aubrey's reign of terror, but it was pretty hard. She'd find a way to drag you down with her if she got into trouble._

_Her issues with me started around the time The 7 Swords got involved in her Dad's business. He had borrowed a lot of money from them when his business started going down the toilet, and couldn't pay it back. So they sent my Dad to deal with him; I was like 6ish, about to turn 7. My Dad had left me in the lobby, with Aubrey, who was sitting there ignoring me until we heard a crash outside and saw her Father on the pavement. My Dad had run out the door, looking frazzled, on the phone with 911. It clearly wasn't his idea to kill him. Aubrey's Mom and older brother knew that. But we looked up at the roof, to see Trent Harbor._

_Either he had pushed him, or tricked him into jumping, or forced him into jumping; we'll never know. But since Aubrey only saw me and my Father, she decided that it was our fault, and that she was going to take it out on me the very best that she could. That meant, somehow twisting it around that I caused it, and now she legitimately thinks that I did it. She kept on saying that she'd find a way to get me back for it, but I never thought she'd actually try._

_It was after lunch, I was the only person in the bathroom. The counter in there had a broken edge, which a girl had been sent to the hospital because she had fallen onto it. Aubrey came in, and cornered me against it. I wasn't really scared, I kind of wanted to face Aubrey, just to see what she was going to try and do. _

_"What do you want?" I asked, I had been growing tired of having to deal with her. Frankly, I just wanted her to shut up, go away, and never bother me again._

_"Bitch." Aubrey said. That was basically what she called every single girl in our class._

_"What is it Aubrey? What did I do to you this time?" I asked._

_"I told you I was going to make you pay. That means I'm going to make you pay." She said. I looked down at the corner._

_"I've been through worse. I've been through a lot worse than a pointy corner." I said. The only reason that girl had been sent to the hospital was because she had hit her head on the way down. Had Aubrey just pushed me, I'd probably be fine._

_"You ruined my life."_

_"I never did anything to you."_

_"Liar."_

_"Shut up Aubrey. You know it wasn't me. I was sitting next to you, in the lobby when it happened. It wasn't me, it wasn't my Dad, it was my Uncle. You know him. Your Dad borrowed money from him, and he couldn't pay it back. You remember that, but you want to blame me." I said, sighing out of exhaustion. I was 100% done with Aubrey, and I wished that she would just leave._

_"Liar." She said again. This time I just rolled my eyes and sighed. _

_"Aubrey, you're Father died. I ran out there with you. I didn't do it, I was right beside you when it happened. I can understand that you want to blame somebody for this, but both your Mom and Will know that it wasn't me, and that it wasn't my Dad." I said, trying to make her understand. _

_I knew a fight was brewing, I knew it was inevitable, but with Aubrey, it was better to try and talk her down before you fought with her. Plus, that was what school rules said, and what the teachers said, and in school I tried to be a good kid. I got pretty good grades and had an overall a pretty good behavior; but when it came down to Aubrey, whether she threatened me or anyone else, I'd lose it. Honestly, I wouldn't have cared if I did fight with her. I wanted to punch her so badly but I needed to make sure that I wouldn't get blamed if I did hit her._

_"All because of you my life is messed up." She said._

_"You don't even make any sense. I was like 6! How could I have killed anyone?!" I protested. She started cussing me out as loud as she could. My calm façade was fading, and I was so close to hitting her. She tried to punch me, and I ducked. I jumped out of her way so I was no longer against the edge. "Screw you, Aubrey." I said. My thoughts were primary on where the teacher was._

_"I'm going to kill you." Aubrey said, as she threw another punch._

_"Fuck off." I snapped. "It's not my fault. I didn't do anything to you or your dysfunctional family. I'm not my family. I'm not my Uncle. I'm not my Dad. My Uncle is the one you should be mad at. He's the one that did it." I was trying as hard as I could not to make things worse._

_"You're a lying bitch." Aubrey snarled._

_All I could see was red. I wanted to something to die, and I wanted that something to be her. All I could feel was rage, pure rage; it was like I wasn't even me anymore. There was so much anger and rage and pure hatred. I couldn't remember why I was so mad at her; I just wanted to hurt her. That's all I could think of, hurting her as badly as I could._

_She tried to ram me into the corner again. It was easy to dodge her poorly executed moves. I smacked her as hard as I could. She just sneered at me and tried to punch me again. I dodged all of the moves. She kicked out at me, and I fell. She laughed, and turned to walk away but changed her mind and turned back._

_She said something. I was so wrapped up in a haze of anger from what she said, that I don't even remember what it was. All I know was that I wanted to kill her. I pushed her against the wall, I punched her, I kicked her to the ground; I did so many things that I was previously against. I beat her up, taking all of my anger out on her. I didn't stop until she screamed. _

_That's when it hit me what I was doing. I was no better than Aubrey, I was no better than my Uncle. If anything, I only made things worse with Aubrey. I could tell, by the look of horror on her face, that I made my point clear. You don't screw with Alex Harbor and come out of it unscarred. You don't screw with A Harbor, and come out of it unscarred._

_At that point I ran. I didn't say anything, I didn't talk to anyone. I grabbed my stuff and ran. I didn't go back to class, and just ran from the building. I didn't even go back to school that week. But when I did come back, Aubrey didn't mess with me or anyone of us ever again. Everyone knew what I did. And that made me just like them._

From that point on, I realized that I was more like them than I wanted to admit. And that scared the living hell out of me. From that point on, I wished that I was somebody in a movie. That way, I could have a better life. I thought that the Marvel Universe was better than my universe, and I wanted to go and live there. I didn't really mean it at the time; I just wanted to get away from everything. I wanted to run away from everything, including myself.

After that, I abandoned the search. I grabbed my backpack, and started shoving stuff in there. Anything I'd need anything I couldn't live without. I grabbed everything I thought I'd need if I suddenly needed to run. I shoved at least half of my belongings in there; my laptop, my iPad, my printed search results, clothes, wallet, and Buster's leash. I was planning on going to find Captain America.

Bringing another superhero into that situation, was probably a stupid idea; but he was the least likely to call the police on me, so it was probably a 50-50 scenario. One chance was, he'd call the cops or S.H.I.E.L.D anyway. The other was, he'd listen to what I had to say and hopefully believe me. I prayed that it would be the second one.

"Come on buddy." I called as I walked to the front of the apartment, "We've got a man out of time to find."

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**Please review.**


	7. Journal Entry 4

**This is just filler, but read it anyway. Her reaction is probably a lot better than any of us if we met a famous person.**

**But Alex can be a very chill person, or can pretend to be. Most of the time she is on edge because she was raised that way.**

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May 12th, 2012

12:00 pm

Sitting on the subway

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Dear Journal,

The subway sucks a lot more than I remember. Not only did I manage to get a dog on here, I'm sitting next to a man wearing nothing but a sign that said, WILL PUT CLOTHES ON FOR FOOD. I offered him a granola bar, and he cussed me out. Then an old man came over and shooed him away. Then the old man sat down next to me. Guess who that old man is. STAN FREAKING LEE! I've got to go; I think he's going to talk to me about something.

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\- A.G.H

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**Please review.**


	8. Chapter 4: Stupidity

**I don't have much to explain for this chapter. It's pretty self-explanatory.**

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**Chapter 4: Stupidity**

I had spent over an hour waiting for the 8th train. I was talking to myself, and talking to my dog, while getting strange looks from everybody. I was worried about everything under the sun. When I finally got on the train, I was sitting in the back by myself. Then, not even 5 minutes later, the crazy sign guy sat down next to me. Then I found out that the old man who shooed him away was Stan Lee. It took me a lot longer than I want to admit to realize who he was.

"He used to be a comic book god." I thought quietly, "Now he's just a random old man with odd jobs." I couldn't help but think about his roles in the movies and cartoons. He was wherever the superheroes were. He was the mailman in the Baxter Building in the Fantastic Four, a guy with a truck in Thor, two roles where Tony Stark forgot who he was, he was an elderly confused general in Captain America, and he was clearly going to be a character in The Avengers. I looked up at him, as he watched me staring.

"Hello." He said.

"Hi." I said quietly. I didn't know why I was being so shy, but then again he was still THE STAN LEE. No matter what universe, he was still going to be one of my heroes, "I'm Alex." I was quietly trying to regain my cool.

It took him a moment to realize I was asking him to say his name, "I'm Stan. Stan Lee." He said. I smiled.

"Nice to meet you." I said, holding out my hand. We shook hands. After a moment, I spoke again. "So what do you do?" He wasn't shy at all.

"I do odd jobs. I deliver mail, I work as a janitor at Midtown High, I travel around the country, and I write amateur comic books." He said, "I try and make some money off the comics, but it's mostly for fun." He looked so sad when he said the last part. "I wanted to be a professional, but nobody liked my ideas." I didn't know what to say, until it hit me.

"One day, you will." I said quietly. I wasn't sure if I should be saying stuff like that, since not only was he a stranger, but he also couldn't know about the fact that I knew more than he did about him.

"You really think so?" He asked, visibly brightening up. I nodded.

"Yeah, I really do." I said.

"Hey it looks like we're at the station." He said, as the train pulled to a stop.

"That's my stop." I said, standing up and motioning for Buster to stand up. "I go to Midtown for the lectures; maybe I'll see you around." I waved, before getting off the train and heading up to the street.

I did go to Midtown High for the lectures; except it wasn't very fun. There was no Stan Lee or Spiderman in my universe. I was already at ground level before I realized what I just thought. Spiderman, Peter Parker, goes to Midtown High. I went to Midtown High for the lectures. I was giddy at the thought that I would get to meet Spiderman.

I started walking down the road, feeling as if I had just been a part of movie foreshadowing. I kept Buster close as I looked for the correct street sign. When I finally found it, I burst down the street as quickly as I could. I wanted to get everything over with as quickly as I could.

As soon as I walked into the building, I walked towards the staircase. People could be so oblivious, and I managed to get Buster in there. I walked all the way up to his floor and knocked on the door. Strangely enough, there was nobody in the hallway. I knocked on the door again. I heard somebody get up and walk to the door, and I questioned my decisions. He opened the door and stared at me.

"Who are you?" He asked.

"Steve Rogers?" I asked, even though I knew who he was. He nodded warily.

"I need your help." I said.

"Who are you?"

"My name's Alex; and I know that you're Captain America." I said quietly. He opened the door wider, and motioned for me to come inside. He locked the door behind me.

"How do you know who I am?" He asked.

"Because I'm not supposed to be here either." I said.

"Sit down." He said, motioning for me to go into the living room. I did as he said, and a few minutes later, he followed.

"Who are you?" He asked again.

"Alex Harbor." I said.

"What did you mean that you're not supposed to be here?" He asked. I took a deep breath, trying to find a good way to word it.

"Well, it all started with the storm…" I launched into this whole speech about it. I told him what happened, I told him what I knew about the universe we were in, I told him what I knew about him, and I told him what I knew about my own universe. I told him about running into Tony Stark; I told him why I was coming to him.

Oddly enough, he listened to everything I said. He didn't interrupt me. He didn't call me crazy. He just listened. He didn't even know me, and he knew exactly what I needed to hear; nothing. I needed somebody that would listen to everything that I said.

"Ok." He said. I was shocked.

"What?" I asked, "You believe me?" He sighed.

"You know more than what's on the S.H.I.E.L.D files. You know more than what's on mine. I have to believe that. HYDRA didn't know that much, it is impossible that anybody knows anything about this. But you do." He said.

"I can't get taken in by S.H.I.E.L.D." I said. Most of my focus was on the New York traffic. It seemed to get even louder. I was feeling paranoid, and I was being stupid by telling him. I just told him everything.

"Why not? If you don't want S.H.I.E.L.D to know, then why did you talk to anybody about it?" He asked.

"Firstly, my family name is kind of frowned upon in New York. Secondly, I thought I was going to go crazy if I kept all of this to myself." I said. He had a point, if I didn't want S.H.I.E.L.D to find out, then I shouldn't have said anything about it to anyone.

"What do you mean frowned upon?" He asked, starting to get into the personal types of questions.

"I've already said too much." I said, standing up from my seat. He leaned forward and grabbed my arm.

"Sit." He said. I sighed and sat back down.

"What do you mean frowned upon?" He asked again.

"My name is Alexandra Harbor. My family is made up of con men and crazy people. I probably know more about this then I should, and if S.H.I.E.L.D finds me, I'm a little worried that they'd try and get something out of me." I said.

"Then you really shouldn't have mentioned it to anyone." He said. The traffic seemed to be getting even louder as we spoke. I stood up and walked over to the window.

"I know, but my main problem is: How did I get here?" I asked, rhetorically. My voice getting lower at each word as I looked out the window.

"S.H.I.E.L.D might need to get involved; to find out what this is." He said.

"I really need to go." I said. I finally understood what was going on, why my paranoia was off the charts. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I couldn't breathe.

"Why?" He asked. He didn't understand what was wrong with me, but he knew that I was freaking out.

"Because," I took a deep breath, trying to get oxygen into my lungs, "OF that." I said, gesturing out the window. "You hear all that traffic?" He nodded, not really getting what I was getting at, "Those are S.H.I.E.L.D cars."

His house must have been bugged. Clearly he didn't know what bugs were, by the confused look on his face. He just knew that they had caught me. They probably had cameras and bugs all over that hallway, and a little girl coming to the girl, knowing who he was, probably came across as wrong to them. He jumped to his feet and almost sprinted to the window. Once he saw the scene below, he realized how screwed I really was.

"Go." He mouthed, pointing towards the door.

We both knew I wasn't getting very far, but I needed to at least put an effort behind not getting caught. I flew down the hall and down the stairs. Once inside the lobby, there were S.H.I.E.L.D agents everywhere. I ducked through the lobby, trying to stay hidden, and ducked into the ladies room. I almost knocked a woman leaving to the ground on my way in. I pushed Buster out the window, and climbed out after him.

Then I ran, as fast as I could down the street. I didn't bother with the subway; the subway took too long and you didn't know who you were in a train car with. S.H.I.E.L.D was everywhere, and they knew exactly who I was. There was no guarantee that they were going to give me any mercy whatsoever, and I had to figure out how to get back there quickly.

I hailed a cab, and told him to floor it back to my apartment building. When I got there, S.H.I.E.L.D was once again waiting for me, and I ran around back. I somehow made my way up the stairs without getting caught, and found my way into my apartment.

I hid things that I didn't want them to find. I pulled out my Dad's handgun from his safe and threw it into my bag. I left out food for Little Girl and WALL-E in the kitchen. I sent a group message to all my friends and cousins that I liked.

**Me: I'm in trouble. Stay away.**

Somebody started to type a response. I panicked, wondering what to do, since the footsteps on the stairs were getting louder and louder. I quickly silenced it using our code.

**Me: Silence falls.**

That meant: **I'm most likely screwed and am in a situation where I might not come out of it alive, so don't call or text me unless you want to get shot. **

The response disappeared. I was pretty sure it was Dina, since she always answered my texts. I was about to leave it at that, but I quickly added another one.

**Me: I'm sorry for everything I did. I'll contact you if I can or when it's safe.**

I deleted all trace of those messages out of my phone as I heard them knocking on my door. I pushed my dresser in front of the door. They only knocked harder. I cleared out my living room of anything I didn't want them to find. I pushed the bookcase in front of the door to my Father's old room, going as far as taking the doorknob off and putting it in a dresser drawer. It didn't look like there should have been a door there; nobody would notice it. I locked the balcony doors; I pushed my coffee table in front of the door. I locked myself in my bedroom, hid my desktop, and made it seem as if I wasn't even there.

I didn't breathe, as if a single breath would let them know where I was. Within a minute, the door was kicked down. I heard what sounded like guns. People stormed around the apartment, and walked right past my Dad's room. The walked past everything I had hidden. They were too busy trying to clean out my couch, which had nothing but loose change, Cheetos, and bird feathers.

"We know you're in here!" A voice yelled. I didn't recognize the voice from any movie or one-shot. They must have been S.H.I.E.L.D agents of lesser importance.

They'd have to walk down a long hallway to get to my room. Every step he took was like a painful breath. I thought I was going to die, when I heard _and_ felt my door being kicked down. The man pointed his gun straight at me, but put it down when he realized I was just a kid huddled against a wall, scared to death.

"Are you Alexandra Harbor?" He asked. I nodded. He pulled up his walkie-talkie, "Agent Coulson, I've found her." I thought my heart was going to stop. The Agent Coulson was on my case. I didn't know whether to be happy about that, or terrified.

"On it." He replied. Within a few minutes, he was up in my room.

"She doesn't look like a threat." The Agent said when Coulson walked into the room. I could tell he was questioning whether I was a threat or not too.

"We never know Agent Ward." He said, "Leave me alone with her, I've got this." The other Agent—Agent Ward, left the room. Coulson knelt down in front of me.

"We're not going to hurt you. We're going to help figure this out." He said. I could tell that he had been listening in on my conversation with Steve Rogers. "I'm Phil." He said, trying to calm me down. He held his hand out, for me to shake. I looked at him warily for a moment, before I took it.

"Alex." I said quietly.

"We'll need to debrief you." He said. I nodded and pointed at Buster.

"The dog stays." I said seriously.

"The dog stays." He repeated, helping me to my feet. The S.H.I.E.L.D agents searching my apartment were shocked when we came out of there. I don't think they were expecting an 11 year old girl to be the suspect.

We walked down to his car, walking past my landlady, who he told to watch my apartment. I sat in the backseat of the car, and they put my bag in the trunk. The car was a S.H.I.E.L.D issue, it looked like all the other cars in the area at the moment. Agent Sitwell sat in the passenger seat and the Agent Ward guy sat on the other side of the backseat.

"They're fixing my front door right?" I asked as he started the car. I could have sworn I saw him twitch a smile.

"We'll see about that." He said, before putting his sunglasses and driving off. Everybody in the Marvel Universe seemed to have a thing for dramatic exits.

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**I'm going to try and end every serious/semi-serious chapter with a happy note. I was kind of depressed when I wrote Lost in Translation, my outlook on life wasn't very good, so I'm going to change that.**


	9. Chapter 5: Interrogation

**Only the first half of the chapter is Interrogation, the rest is setting up for the next one. I hope you're happy for what I just put in there.**

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**Chapter 5: Interrogation**

I was bored out of my mind, sitting in a metal room, at a metal table, while staring at a two-way mirror. I was still waiting for another agent to come talk to me. It had been an hour since the last one, and I was getting annoyed. On TV, whenever somebody's in an interrogation room, you see them messing around with the people on the other side of the glass, but that just seemed like a good way to get tased.

"When did you first notice that something was going on?" Agent Hill asked. Apparently an 11 year old was a good enough reason to call her and Director Fury in.

"Around a day or two before the storm ended." I said. I was trying to keep it simple, I had already told that story too many times.

"What did you notice?" She asked.

"That the skyline seemed to have changed." I said with a yawn.

"When did you actually see what was going on?" She asked.

"The day after the storm ended." I said, "Like I said, I went out for a movie, they didn't have the movie. The movie was supposed to be a Marvel Movie, which is what all of this was back in my universe. I swear that I'm not lying. At least half of these interrogations had me hooked up to a lie detector test." That was true, even though I could lie through my teeth even on a lie detector test, "I went back to walk my dog in central park. As I was walking towards the park, suddenly Stark Tower and OsCorp were there."

"Neither Stark Tower nor OsCorp were in New York the last time you checked?" She asked, writing everything I said down.

"Neither of those buildings existed in real life—or at least the life that I remember." I said. I could tell that everybody was finding that hard to believe, but then again, they didn't really have much choice to believe me or not. I knew more about some things than they did.

"Then what happened?"

"I saw a Stark Industries billboard on the side of the building. I was looking at it and walking. I ran into Tony Stark." I said.

"You met Tony Stark?" She asked.

"No, I literally ran into him." I said, "Like hit the pavement, ran into him. I didn't know who he was at first, then he spoke. I looked up, saw it was him, started stuttering out gibberish while talking to myself, and then I freaked out and ran."

"What happened after that?" She asked.

"I started looking everything up." I said, "When I realized that it was legitimately happening, that somehow it all existed, I knew I'd have to talk to somebody. So I tried to gauge who was less likely to call the cops on me, and that's how I wound up in Captain America's living room telling him everything that had happened in hopes that he could help me. But, I stupidly thought that S.H.I.E.L.D wouldn't have bugged his apartment, so I didn't put any thought into that part of the equation."

"Ok." She said, setting down her pencil and closing her file, "Somebody will be back to check up on you soon." She got out of her chair and left me alone. They had told me that at least 12 times, and it usually took from 30 minutes to an hour.

I had already told that story to 12 different agents. By the end of the day, I basically had it down to a science. I told them everything that mattered, and didn't care if they looked at me like I was crazy. The only people that didn't look at me like I was crazy was the guy who kicked down my front door, Agent Ward—why do I get the feeling that I'll need to remember that name—and Agent Coulson. The person that came to check on me, an hour later I might add, was Agent Coulson or Phil, as he was somehow ok with me calling him that. Despite the fact that I still had the lingering feeling that I was going to get shot, I felt pretty safe there.

He walked into the room, and closed the door. My attention was mostly on the two-way glass on the other side of the room. He plopped a file down in front of me. I pulled it closer to me, and opened it. I flipped through the pages, finding that most of it was blacked out. It was labeled 0-8-4.

"What's an 0-8-4?" I asked, trying to get to the important parts first.

"It means: we don't know what this is." He said, "We got strange readings from the storm, similar readings that we received from one of our more top secret projects."

"The Tesseract." I stated, not even asking.

"Yes." He said with a sigh.

"You know that I know about as much about this as you. So why is half of this file blacked out? I mean, I lived through this storm." I asked.

"Because I don't have the clearance either." He said, "Nobody on this floor has the clearance to read these files. These are top secret readings. Only Level 7 agents and scientists are allowed to read this."

"You're only Level 6. Right?" I asked.

"Yes." He said.

"What's going to happen to me?" I asked.

"Director Fury requested that we run a few tests on you." He said, "We'll work from there." In other words, I probably wasn't leaving.

"What kinds of tests?" I asked.

"Simple blood tests, radiation tests, and maybe a few intelligence tests." He said, "Simple stuff." The words 'Radiation Tests' kind of worried me. Before I could ask him anything, he already grabbed me by the arm, and was taking me to a laboratory.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"We're going to the medical ward." He said, leading me past the agents, "But, I'm going to go ahead and warn you, most of our scientists and doctors are either working on the Project Storm or The Tesseract Project and we didn't really have a medical staff here to start with. So the scientists I have here to perform the tests on you aren't exactly doctors."

"I'm not in any danger am I?" I asked.

"No, but they're not very well prepared." He said, "They haven't had much experience in the medical field."

"And hold on—Project Storm?" I asked.

"Short notice." He said, "We're not literature majors."

"Ok, ok, I never said that you were. But I would have thought that S.H.I.E.L.D could have come up with something better than Project Storm…and wasn't that already used for something?" I asked. I was blanking on whatever it was.

"It's an informal title." He said, growing irritated with me.

"Dude, it's fine." I said, "It's just not your best idea."

"You told somebody about the very thing you didn't want anybody to find out about." He said, staring me down.

"Touché." I said under my breath.

I desperately wanted to write in my journal, even if it was just to get some of my worries down on paper, but that was in my bag. They were putting my bag through an x-ray machine for what seemed like the 10th time to make sure I wasn't trying to kill anybody.

"Are they seriously doing this again?" I asked as we walked past the room. I stopped in the hallway and watched as they put it in there _again_. "This is getting annoying."

"They're taking all the necessary precautions." He said, though I could tell that he thought it was annoying as well. "Can you be a little more careful?" He asked as he saw how they were throwing my stuff around, "I promised her that we'd give everything back in one piece." They did as he said.

"Except my door." I said.

"We'll get somebody to fix that." He said.

"On top of the fact that I'm terrified that something seriously went wrong, I'm apparently a dangerous criminal that they need to protect everybody in this building from." I said, shrugging my shoulders.

"We'll, to be fair; you don't exactly have a clean record." He said. I stopped in the middle of the hallway.

"How do you know that?" I asked, "I wiped that from the public records."

"We have those records." He said.

"How does this work?" I asked, "I mean, I lived in a parallel universe. Now you have all of my records and it's like I lived here." He didn't say anything about that.

"Breaking and entering, stolen property, threatening the police, shoplifting, hacking, piracy, destruction of private property, assault on a mayor, vandalism, pyromania, grand theft auto, and that's not even half of it." I didn't look him in the eye.

I did all of that around the time I was 8. I was told to do that, and I did. I stole a freaking car when I was 8 because my Uncle threatened me into doing it. I lit a car on fire, because I felt like it. I spray painted all over a building, because I felt like it. The things they made me do, shaped me into the person that I was; a pyromaniac with family issues.

"Yeah." Was all I said.

"You're lucky that you're not in juvie with all the stuff you pulled." He said, staring down at me.

"I know that." I said, "And I didn't assault the mayor. He pulled the gun before I close lined him." Saying stuff like that was in the normal for me. The real reason I wasn't in juvie, was because of my family. Most of the time, people took pity on me or were too scared of my family to do anything about it.

"Why did you do it?" He asked.

"Because I had to." I said, leaving it at that. I was afraid that he'd ask me another question, but thankfully we got there before he said anything else.

"Here we are." He opened the door and led me into the laboratory. I looked at the people inside. I had absolutely no idea who they were, and I didn't want to say that to them. Half of these S.H.I.E.L.D agents had showed up as background characters, except they didn't. I had never seen them before, not in one movie or one-shot.

"Is this it?" I asked, looking around at the small table of equipment. It looked clean and sturdy, but it looked out of place in that lab.

"This isn't what we normally do." The woman said.

"You'll be fine." He said quickly, before closing the door and leaving me with them. I wished that he would have stayed, mostly out of comfort. After a second of staring out the door I turned back to face them.

"So…um…what do you normally do?" I asked awkwardly, trying to make small talk before they poked me with a needle.

"I'm engineering, she's biochem." The man said.

"Goodie."

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**So what do you think? **

**Please review. **

**And if you don't know who said, "I'm engineering, she's biochem." then the next chapter isn't going to make any sense. And you don't know who Agent Ward from the previous chapter is.**


	10. Chapter 6: Testing

**I hope you people are happy.**

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**Chapter 6: Testing**

The 'Radiation Testing' was basically putting me through a scanner, and seeing how much radiation I had in my body, except I had to do that 5 times to check for all the different types of radiation. They were checking for everything from gamma radiation to Tesseract radiation, not that they'd tell me that it was Tesseract radiation. I snuck a quick peek at the file when they weren't looking. It didn't say Tesseract Radiation, but it said Project Pegasus, which is what the other file said when it was talking about the Tesseract, so I was assuming that's what it meant.

The 'Intelligence Testing' was basically like an extremely long and complex IQ test. I answered every single question as honestly and quickly as I could, putting my best work in it. It took me 15 minutes to do over 250 questions. By the look on their faces, I could tell that I did that in record timing. By the way that they looked at me afterwards, I could tell that I did extremely well on it. That led to them giving me several more tests, and having similar reactions to my scores on those as well.

After that test they gave me a sheet of paper I'd have to fill out. It was listing things like fears, financial situation, contact information, and emergency contact information. I had to put Dina and Robert down as my emergency contacts. My financial situation was easy to gauge, since I did my own bills. My fears, well, those were harder. Most of those, I didn't want to list out, so I listed out what I thought was important; heights, falling, falling from heights, spiders, and snakes.

I had already gone through ¾ of the testing, before I actually asked their names. I was too worried that something would go wrong, that I had forgotten to ask them. How do you forget to ask people their names? Oh yeah, you're in a government building getting tested on while panicking that you're going to die.

"Um…what are your names?" I asked.

"Fitz." The man said.

"Simmons." The woman said, as soon as he finished saying his name. "Now, we're going to do the blood testing." I raised an eyebrow.

"Blood testing?" I said, "What kind of blood testing?"

"I'm going to take some blood and we're going to run some tests on it." She said. I nodded slowly.

Did I have reason to be worried? Probably not. Was I worried? Extremely. Especially since the nice lady pulled out a big needle. Usually that means you're either going night-night or you're about to die. Mine was somewhere along the second one.

**27 minutes 42 seconds of excruciating pain later**

"Ow!" I yelled for the 7th time, "You're supposed to be taking my blood, not repeatedly pricking me with a needle!"

"I'm sorry! I just can't find the vein!" Simmons snapped. Around the 3rd time she had done it, Fitz had given me a stress ball to take my anger out on. Around the 5th time, the stress ball was in a hundred pieces all over the floor. He was now in the process of cleaning up the floor while his friend continually pricked me with a needle and missed my vein.

"I don't know if you know this, but taking blood is not in my job description." She said nervously, as she tried to find the vein again.

"Then why are you doing it?" I asked. She didn't answer. "OW!" I yelled again, "THAT'S NOT MY VEIN! Why are you doing this?!"

"Because nobody else here knows how!" She yelled.

"I don't think you know how!" I protested.

"Give me the needle." Fitz said.

"No." She said, pulling her arm back.

"Jemma, give me the needle!" He yelled. I watched the scene unfold in front of me. They were wrestling over a needle. A needle that they were going to have to poke me with. It was a cross between funny and weird.

"Um…guys." I said, "That's a needle. Just get it in my vein and take some of my blood." I said, "I don't care who does it as long as it goes into my vein this time." She gave him the needle and he did it in one try.

"Thank you." I said, letting out a sigh of relief. I turned to look at Simmons, "By the way, you might want to work on that." I didn't mean that to be rude, but she really needed to work on that. She nodded.

"I know." She said, before going back to her files and walking off.

"Is that everything? Am I done here?" I asked, sticking some gauze and a Band-Aid on my arm.

"Yes, just go sit and wait for Agent Coulson." Fitz said. I didn't know whether they were desperate to get rid of me, or they needed to check the results, or what; but it probably wasn't a good idea to leave me alone in a hallway. After all, I was apparently a dangerous criminal that needed to have somebody watching them 24/7. After a few minutes, probably after realizing what he did, he poked his head out of the door. "Don't go anywhere." He said.

"Nowhere to go. They've got my stuff." I said. He nodded abruptly and closed the door.

I sat there for a while, waiting for Agent Coulson to come back. I heard and saw Buster before I saw Agent Coulson. Coulson was attempting to keep Buster in check while walking him towards me. As soon as Buster set his eyes on me he burst into a sprint down the hallway, nearly ripping Agent Coulson's arm from its socket.

Coulson dropped the leash, yelling for everyone to watch out, which was a smart move. Otherwise Buster would have really ripped his arm from its socket. He had almost done that to me on more than one occasion. He had done that to Robert on more than one occasion.

"Hey." I said as he sprung on me like a windup toy, licking my face. "Ok, ok, ok. I get it, I get it. You missed me. It's only been 3 hours." I pushed him off of me.

"Director Fury wants to see you." Coulson said, handing me back my bag. I looked at him wide eyed as I got to my feet.

"_The_ Director Fury wants to see me?" I asked. He nodded.

"It's going to be ok. He's not going to kill you." He said. I rolled my eyes.

"I can't believe that when it comes to S.H.I.E.L.D, I don't know who I can trust." I said honestly.

"We'll you can trust me. If you can trust one person in this building, it's me." He said, trying to be sincere.

"Ok Agent Coulson—" I said.

"Phil." He said, "Just call me Phil."

"We're on a first name basis?" I asked.

"If it makes you feel safer." He said.

"Ok…Phil, so what does Director Fury want with me?" I asked.

"He wants to talk to you. To see what you're like. To see if you match up with what your test scores say. And, in his own words, and I quote: 'She sounds like a 50 year old scholar, acts like a teenager, and is really a scared 11 year old girl'." Phil said.

"Well, that sounds like me." I said, shrugging my shoulders.

"Exactly, now just talk to Fury and nothing bad is going to happen." He said, trying to be reassuring. We walked down the hallway to Fury's makeshift office. They weren't supposed to be there, and they just gave him an office to work out of for the time being. He almost had to push me into the door. "You're going to be fine." He said again. Then he left me in the room. Marvel Universe people really liked to be dramatic.

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**Please review.**


	11. Chapter 7: The Conversation

**Well, I'm working on Chapter 9 now. I would expect for this version to be slightly longer than the original story, and the chapters will probably be the same way.**

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**Chapter 7: The conversation**

The first thing he did was make me retell the story once again. I was completely done with that story. It was annoying to tell it for the 15th time. Then he asked me about my life; which I didn't like, because I don't really like talking to people about my personal life unless I absolutely have to, and I absolutely had to. Then he started talking about the IQ test scores, and how they made me sound completely different from how I acted.

"These tests show remarkable results." He said, "But they make you sound like one of those people who wasted their life reading up about useless shit just so they could know all that useless shit and you act like a teenager."

"That's kind of the point." I said, "I've already had to grow up faster than I should have, people already look at me funny for how I act. I don't need them to know how good my memory is. I freaked out my school so bad they paid for private testing."

Private testing was expensive, especially in New York city, where anyone would charge you anything for something like that, even if they were supposed to be a well-respected company. He looked impressed. I wasn't sure whether that was good or bad.

"You're 11." He said, "You shouldn't be this smart. You shouldn't have been able to do half the stuff you've done in the past 4 years."

"I know that." I said, "Nobody acts how adults see 'Acting their age'. They either act more mature or less mature. Trust me; I've been around enough kids."

"Oh I believe you." He said, "But how did you do this stuff. You're criminal record is scary. Most of that had happened between ages 7-9."

"I'm not exactly proud of any of that." I said.

"Why did you do it?"

"I did what I had to."

"You keep giving us answers like this. What does that mean—"

"Have you ever had this person that you just had to impress? Like, you'd do anything to get their approval?" I asked. He didn't say anything, knowing that I wasn't really asking him for an answer, "We'll that's basically what it was like. I did what my family told me to, because I had to impress them. I had to impress them, so they wouldn't hate me and would actually make sure that I was taken care of. You know my family's track record."

"Yes, I do. It's not a good one."

"Every single crime in the book, was committed at least once by somebody with the last name Harbor. At least half of those were committed by me."

"We were hoping that you'd tell us what you know."

"I'm not telling you anything."

"Why not? You just said that you're living conditions with your family weren't exactly ideal."

"Because despite the fact that every single one of them is a jackass, I still have a sense of respect for them."

It was less of a sense of respect and more of a sense of fear. I knew that if I let something slip, I was done for, like everyone who had ever crossed the Harbor family. If they had killed some of their own blood for a slip up, then they would surely kill me. Nobody in the Harbor family liked the government, so telling S.H.I.E.L.D what it would take to take them down, was a good way to get myself shot.

"You'll be a valuable asset." He insisted.

"For what purpose? So I can help you out or so I can tell you about my family's whereabouts?" I asked accusingly. I was fairly certain that they wanted me to be their spy.

"Both." He said, trying to get his point across gently.

"Look, here's what I think. If you want my help, you promise me that you're not going to use me to find them." I said.

"I can make you no such promises." He said.

"You either make me that promise or I'm not doing squat." I demanded. He sighed.

"Fine. That deal only lasts until the end of your consultation." He said.

"I am perfectly fine with that." I said.

"You're one tough kid." He said.

"New York teaches you lots of things. Another one is to constantly carry pepper spray." I said honestly.

"They found that in your bag."

"I thought I lost that."

"Back to the topic on hand, let's talk about the radiation testing." He said, taking out the file.

"Uh oh." I couldn't shake the feeling that something went horribly wrong with that test.

"These results, we've only seen them a handful of times. This radiation matches what came off the Tesseract, what came off Thor's hammer, what came off everything not from this world." He said, "Why is that?"

"I don't know." I said, "I'm not supposed to be here. This isn't supposed to be happening to me."

"Alexandra, we think it would be best if you stayed here until we got this all sorted out." He said.

I was pretty sure that was S.H.I.E.L.D code for: **We have no idea what you are and it's freaking us out so we're going to keep you for a while, possibly forever. **That probably made me one of those 0-8-4s, like the freaky as fuck storm that was one of them.

Needless to say, I was freaking out A LOT. I knew that I was going to stay with S.H.I.E.L.D for a little while, but I didn't think that they'd keep me. I didn't want to stay there forever. I didn't even want to be there at all. They knew everything. Everything I didn't want to admit, everything I worked my ass off to hide from them. And now they know everything about it.

At least I was protecting the jackasses that I had to call family. That is until I can leave 'The Family Business', which is basically receiving a letter, being told to go to a certain place, meeting with Robert and Dina, and almost getting arrested, or getting arrested, while doing something illegal.

For a while, if I didn't come, Uncle Trent would come to my apartment/school and force me to come, but at some point he stopped caring. That was basically my biggest fear when I was little, that he was going to come and get me if I didn't do what he told me to do. Now I just don't care what he thinks.

Like Fury said, my childhood wasn't exactly ideal, but I learned how to overcome that. Mostly by ignoring it and trying to keep myself from that situation. I wasn't old enough to get out of the situation, but I was old enough to protect myself from it.

Ok, that sounds morbid. I really needed to get more friends, and a life. And maybe a better lock on my front door. That is, if I still have a front door when this is all over.

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**Please review.**


	12. Chapter 8: Introduction to Selvig

**Well, this is a kind of a filler chapter. But you can't skip this or the next one.**

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**Chapter 8: Introduction to Selvig**

"That man with the coffee cup is Dr. Selvig." Fury said pointing across the room, "You'll be observing his work and hopefully consulting him."

Phil was carrying Buster, who for some reason had refused to walk down the stairs.

"What is wrong with this dog?" He asked. I turned around and shrugged.

"No idea. He's always been a bit off. I found this one when I was 7, so it must have happened before then." I said, not really caring. Phil wouldn't take another step until I took Buster from him. The second I tried to grab Buster, I dropped him and he hit the ground with a thud.

"Yelp."

"It's your fault I dropped you. You are a 90 pound dog. Nobody is meant to pick you up, especially when you're squirming." Buster started whining, as in a response. I looked up to see that another man was standing there. He looked amused.

"How long has he been standing here?" I asked.

"Long enough." Phil said. The man just stared at me.

"Does she always talk to her dog?" He asked.

"She has for the past two days, so I'm guessing so." Phil said.

"Agent Barton is here to keep an eye on the project. You are not to disturb him or any of the other stationed guards unless you have to." Fury said. I suddenly felt like I was going to explode.

"I'm not crazy." I said. He didn't say anything, and just walked away. Phil looked like he was trying not to laugh.

"Next time warn me if somebody's watching me." I said. Like always, Fury decided to change the subject.

"I think it's time that you meet Dr. Selvig." He said, starting to walk across the room.

"Is he going to change the subject every time I say something?" I asked.

"Most likely, he's trying to get to the point so he can leave." Phil said.

"Well dude, I get that you're the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, but can you not be in such a hurry and make sure this actually works out before you leave?" I asked.

The thought that he was going to ditch before anyone knew what to do, was scaring me more than I wanted to admit. I needed somebody there to make sure I knew what I was doing. I didn't want to be alone in a strange place. Usually, it would have been a completely different situation. Most of the time, I was happy to be alone. But not when I had no idea what I was supposed to do or whether or not I was safe.

"Dr. Selvig!" Fury called. Dr. Selvig came walking over.

"Director, to what do I owe the pleasure?" He asked. I was used to that sentence being used in a jokey or mocking tone, so I was surprised that he actually meant it the way he said it. My god, living in New York sucked. I don't even know why I stayed there so long.

"Dr. Selvig, I'd like you to meet S.H.I.E.L.D's newest consultant. She'll be here as a go-to if need be." Fury said. Aparently Dr. Selvig had completely different ideas when Fury called in saying that he had a consultant. He probably didn't expect an 11 year old pyromaniac with a love of rockets and bombs.

"When you said consultant I didn't expect a child." Dr. Selvig said, "I expected a scientist."

"She is a scientist." Fury said. He was completely overestimating me, probably by my test scores or my school grades.

"I also like explosions." I said, trying to lighten the mood. It was true, but I was trying to lighten the mood. Dr. Selvig just stared, and Phil burst out laughing. Some of the scientists in the vicinity started snickering as well. I swear that I saw Fury twitch a smile.

"This is a child." Dr. Selvig said.

He was really and truly shocked that Fury would bring a child onboard Project Pegasus. That didn't seem that out of character for Fury; he had always seemed like the kind of guy that if it benefited him, would sell his soul and yours.

"I'm 11. Not a child." I protested. They ignored me.

"She'll be a valuable asset." Fury argued.

"She's a little girl." Dr. Selvig said.

"Yes, she is. But she's smart, knows what's going on, and frankly I need a place to stick her so she doesn't get herself killed." Fury said through gritted teeth, "Now shake her hand and act friendly instead of standing there like a gaping fish." He went as far as making us awkwardly shake hands. Then Dr. Selvig went back to his workstation.

"Keep an eye on him." Fury said, "We need somebody to make sure that he's still alive and working on this Project."

"Is that a good idea?" I asked, "Leaving me here, putting me in charge of something, by myself?" I asked.

"Probably not, knowing your track record; but you won't be alone. Agent Coulson has volunteered to be your designated babysitter." Fury said. Sometimes he looked so serious while saying things that weren't that serious. By the look on Phil's face, I could tell that he didn't volunteer, but was forced to do it. He had his own job, so babysitting an 11 year old probably wasn't ideal. Who in their right mind would willingly babysit somebody like me?

"So what do I do around here? Help out, build something, run tests, or deliver coffee?" I asked.

"It's supposed to be the first one." He said, "I need to have a conversation with the science team." He walked away. I turned back around and Agent Barton was there again. I nearly had a heart attack.

"Good God you're fast!" I said, startled.

"S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters has some rules." He said. I rolled my eyes, thinking that it was going to be a boring list of rules. "Do not break anything unnecessary and do not hurt anybody unnecessary." Upon the amused look on his face, I turned around to see Phil repeatedly mouthing 'No'. I started laughing as I turned around.

"I like your rules." I said.

"No." Phil said almost immediately.

"What?" I asked, momentarily confused.

"The answer is no." He said. That's when it hit me. He knew what I was thinking. He knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to create an explosion.

Whether it was from my record, my reaction to what Agent Barton had said, or just because he had spent 2 days at a S.H.I.E.L.D building talking to me he knew exactly what I was thinking. And that scared me. Even my friends didn't know me well enough to stop me from doing stupid stuff.

"You didn't even know what…" I started.

"No."

"How about…"

"No."

"Just a little one?"

"NO!" He yelled one final time

At that point, I stopped asking. He took Buster's leash from my hand. "I'll show you to your room." We started walking towards what would be my room.

"Please?" I asked one last time, in vain.

"NO!"

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**Please review.**


	13. Journal Entry 5

**Read**

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May 15th, 2012

11:00 pm

In my new room

Status: Tired

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Dear Journal,

I've finally got the chance to write again. The time is less than ideal, but I'm going to go ahead and say this:

I've been here 9 hours. All I've done is fetch coffee and run around the entire base giving files and info to S.H.I.E.L.D agents. But thankfully, I get one of those handy-dandy Level 6 S.H.I.E.L.D badges. Apparently Level 6 is as high as it goes, but I think it goes higher. Why else would Fury be hiding stuff from Phil all of the other Level 6s?

I wish I knew more about what was going on. Dr. Selvig hasn't said anything outside of the coffee range to me. The rest of them just keep handing me files and telling me to give it to so-and-so in _ area. I don't think this is what Fury had in mind, and it's not what I had in mind.

Phil keeps saying that everything will get better, but these people run from 4 am to 10 pm as a 16 hour work day, on the weekends. They run from 3 am to 11 pm as 18 hour work days, during the week. There is no way in hell I'm going to get sleep in a place like this.

The guards think I'm crazy. Fury, understandably, told them to keep a close eye on me. That means that no matter where I go, I have S.H.I.E.L.D agents following me. Selvig doesn't want me to do anything, 'cause he thinks I'm going to break everything. The others just want me to be a file runner. Maybe that's what Fury had in mind. It's most certainly not what I had in mind.

They seem to think that I'm stupid, and I don't know how long I can live with this. I have to live in almost a dorm; Selvig's room on one side, Phil's room on the other; countless S.H.I.E.L.D scientists all the way down the hall. These walls are not soundproofed. Selvig passed out almost the second he entered his room, and let me tell you something, that man snores louder than a hibernating bear.

I've got to go, I need to try and get some sleep before I have to run around and give out more files. This better get better, or I'm calling Fury in to say something about it.

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\- Alex

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**Please review.**


	14. Chapter 9: Project Pegasus

**This chapter is basically a summary of her time at Project Pegasus (Which yes, was the name from the movie)**

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**Chapter 9: Project Pegasus**

**Day 2**

"Can you get me more coffee?" Dr. Selvig asked for the 9th time. At that point, he was jittering, and shaking, and looked like he would spill it the moment I gave it to him.

"You've had 10 cups of coffee, and you're jittering. I don't think you need any more coffee." I said, "I don't want to be held accountable for you breaking everything because I got you more coffee." He nodded and wandered around his workstation for some files.

"You're right." He said, as he was going around in a circle looking for it. I picked up a file that was on the desk and held it up for him to grab.

"This one?" I asked. He lit up and grabbed it from me.

"Yes, yes." He muttered, starting to read the file. "Thank you." Then he walked off to go back to work on the Tesseract. That was the longest conversation I had with anyone that day.

**Day 3**

"Alex, come with me." Phil said. I dropped the coffee tray on one of the workstations, almost spilling all the cups.

"Can I finally do something that doesn't involve coffee?" I asked hopefully. He nodded and I sprinted after him. He went up the long staircase. "What do I get to do?" I asked excitedly, "Anything's better than coffee duty."

We paused outside of the big elevator, which was a good sign. That meant that I got to go above ground.

"I'll show you." He said, "Director Fury has a special assignment for you." That didn't make me feel better.

Once above ground, we walked towards the car deck.

"Do we get to go somewhere?" I asked.

"No," He said, "And you're acting like an overexcited dog."

"Yeah, so what? Speaking of which, what did you do with my overexcited dog?" I asked.

"He's being kenneled upstairs since he didn't want to stay down there." Phil said.

"Ok." As soon as we got into the parking lot, people were handing us boxes. Then they ushered us out of there.

"Fury wants you to use these parts to recreate something." Phil said.

"To recreate what?" I asked.

"Top secret, between you and him," Phil said.

"He wouldn't tell you?" I asked. He nodded.

"The man with secrets." Phil said, "You just have to follow those instructions and do what it says."

**Days 4-7**

I'd spent the last few days building stuff, drinking coffee, and realizing why my previous job was so important. When you could do nothing but work, having a coffee girl was extremely important. Plus, I think I was pissing agents off by having them bring me coffee.

Phil kept coming in to make sure I was ok and to make small talk. You could tell how bored he was considering the fact that he was asking me about anything and everything. I think I made a friend.

I learned that he had been dating a cellist, was a Captain America fanboy, had limited edition vintage trading cards, didn't really have a life, loved dogs, and basically wanted to steal Buster from me. I said no, that he couldn't have my dog.

At some point, he brought Buster in and told me that he had drove every S.H.I.E.L.D agent that tried to babysit him extremely angry. Buster sat there, hiding under my desk and jumping out to scare somebody every time a S.H.I.E.L.D agent went to give me coffee.

I thought it was adorable. Phil recorded it. I had several agents threaten to shoot him. I still thought it was adorable.

**Day 8**

On day 8, I was finished. I went back to work with Dr. Selvig. At that point, he had me read all of his files, just to give me something to do. They had, thankfully, gotten a new coffee lady.

Sometime while reading his files, I pointed out that several of his testing expectations were impossible and that he had made a few mistakes on that one file. All the others were sound. He re-read it, and realized that I was right. Then he agreed to let me help him work.

"How did you recognize mistakes that even our tops scientists couldn't?" He asked as we worked to redo his calculations.

"Don't know. Just got an eye for stuff like that." I said as I scribbled down the facts.

"Director Fury was right, you're a lot smarter than we originally thought." He said.

"Yeah, does that mean I actually get to do something around here?" I asked hopefully. I wanted to do something useful, and rebuilding whatever Fury had me do wasn't exactly fun.

"Of course." He said. Then he thought for a second. "As long as you can control that demon dog." I nodded and laughed.

Buster popped his head up from behind a desk. The look on his face was 'Demon? You think I'm a Demon?'. He could be so sweet, and then turn around and act all evil and stupid. But he was my dog, and that made it ok.

**Day 9-12**

Selvig and I had to completely redo that file. We redid it down to the last word, making sure that everything was working out. We did everything we thought of, we made sure everything was perfect about it. Every single scientist in the room had to help us with it and make sure that we didn't mess anything up. Every single scientist in the room had some kind of input.

Nobody slept and everybody was running off of coffee and sugar and Red Bull and basically anything we could get our hands on. You never realize how much sugar you need until you don't sleep for 3 days straight.

**Day 13**

All of us could work like a well-oiled machine; all the scientists, Dr. Selvig, Phil, and myself. We knew exactly what to do and exactly when to do it. The tests we were running on the Tesseract were going well; Dr. Selvig was working on the harness. I would have rather been building a TARDIS, but I could deal with harnessing the infinite power of the cosmic cube.

**Day 14**

That was the day we noticed that something was wrong.

"Alex, files." Dr. Selvig yelled across the room. He was close to having a panic attack. We were all on edge. The Tesseract was acting a little strange. Every once and a while a few wisps of blue light would come off it.

"On it." I said, sprinting back to get it.

"Our calculations must have been off." He yelled.

"That's impossible." I said, reading over it as I walked back with it, "We triple-checked it and cross-referenced it with everything."

As I read over it, I couldn't find a single mistake. I handed the file off to one of the female scientists who's name I never asked. She and all of the scientists reread it and handed it back.

"The science behind this is flawless." She said.

"It should be, it took 3 days of not sleeping to write it and we had every damn scientist in this building check it." I snapped.

I shocked her when I said that, which I was used to. I used language like that when I got nervous, scared, or mad. I handed the file back to Dr. Selvig who read over it once again.

"Nothing seems wrong, so what's going on?" He asked.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"The Tesseract's acting a little strange." He said.

"It could just be a mistake in the scanners or a momentary issue." I suggested, "We don't know much about the Tesseract. For all we know it could have a mind of its own."

"Maybe." Dr. Selvig said.

"It's probably just a momentary glitch in the scanners, nothing to be worried about." One of the scientists said.

"You're probably right." Dr. Selvig said. We made the mistake of leaving it at that. We thought that something had reacted with the Tesseract and made it do that. We didn't really give it a second thought.

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**Please, please, please, review.**


	15. Journal Entry 6

**Don't skip these journal entries. They cover a lot about Alex and her thoughts.**

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May 29th, 2012

10:30 pm

In my room

Status: Exhausted and freaked out

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Dear Journal,

That was kind of freaky. I mean, the Tesseract was acting all strange. The guys think it was just a scanner messing around with the Tesseract and having a bad reaction to it.

Is that even probable?

I mean, what says that something like that would mess with the Tesseract. I'm pretty sure that he was just trying to reassure himself.

Got to go, we've got a long day against us tomorrow.

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\- Alex

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**Please review.**


	16. Chapter 10: The Dream

**Ok, I'll explain this chapter.**

**I stated in an earlier chapter (if you remember correctly/actually read it) that Alex had traces of strange radiation in her body. That radiation is reacting with the Tesseract, causing her to see what's going on.**

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**Chapter 10: The Dream**

That night, I had a dream. A strange dream I didn't understand. Oddest of all, I knew that I was dreaming, which never happened to me. I didn't see anything. All I saw was space, darkness and stars. Then a raspy voice spoke.

"The Tesseract has awakened." The voice was startling familiar, despite the fact that I'd never heard it before. The voice continued to speak, startiling me further.

"It is on a little world, a human world. They wield its power, but ally is working knows it's working, so that they never will learn." The voice said. Very slowly, I could see a light blue light getting stronger.

"He's ready to lead, and our force, our Chitauri will follow. The world will be his and the universe yours." He was holding a conversation with somebody, somebody I didn't see or hear.

"And the humans, what can they do, but burn." The blue light exploded, like a bomb. I shot up in my bed, panting for breath. I knocked Buster off my bed and he yelped in pain.

I didn't say or do anything, trying to focus on the details of the dream. I was used to having bad dreams, but never like that. I was used to having those dreams where everything seems real and you have no idea that you're dreaming.

Buster climbed back up on the bed, nudged my arm until I lifted it. He made whimpering noises, worried about me. I tried to calm down, telling myself that it wasn't real. Not even 5 minutes later, it all began.

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**Please review.**


	17. Chapter 11: The Tesseract is Misbehaving

**Alex takes charge a little more in this chapter, and is not as harsh as she previously was.**

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**Chapter 11: The Tesseract is Misbehaving**

I fell asleep almost as soon as I set down my journal. I mean seriously, I passed out with that thing still open on my chest with a pen in my hand. I think we all did. We just fell asleep thinking everything would be better in the morning. Then I had that dream around Midnight, then, not even 5 minutes later, an alarm started going off.

It startled me awake and I hurried to get dressed and grab my stuff. My dream was momentarily forgotten about. I bolted out into the hallway, finding myself standing next to Dr. Selvig, who was in his bathrobe, and Phil, who was in his boxers.

"What's going on?" Dr. Selvig yelled. There was a lot of yelling back and forth, arguing about what could have set the alarm off. Nobody bothered to look off the edge. I looked down over the edge, towards the testing center. The rooms were in a line, up on the hallway by the catwalk, so we could see right down in it.

"Shit!" I yelled, rushing past them. I hurried down the flight of stairs and bolted for the research station. Before I could get close to the Tesseract Agent Barton grabbed me and ripped me back.

"Are you insane?!" He yelled.

"Turn off the power!" I yelled. He realized what I was saying and rushed to the research station.

"What do I do?" He asked.

I ripped the keyboard from him and started typing in all of the codes. What I was doing was guaranteed to make sure that it turned off. All the power in the station turned off for less than 3 seconds. It all turned back on quickly, something that was not supposed to happen.

"What the hell?" I yelled.

By that point Dr. Selvig, Phil, and the others were dressed and running after us.

"What happened?" Dr. Selvig asked. I looked up at them.

"Call Fury." I said.

"What happened?" He asked again.

"It turned itself back on." I said as calmly as I could, "Now it's time to call Fury." Dr. Selvig tried to shut it down, but it wouldn't work. They ordered evac and Phil called Fury. I ran after him to hear what he'd say.

"He'll be here in as soon as he can. I want the science team stripped down to the basics and gone. Only those required must stay." Phil said. He looked at me. "Go with them."

"I'm required." I said.

"Alex go with them." He said.

"Not a chance Phil. If you guys are staying, then so am I." I said. He sighed.

"Alex…" He said, "Dr. Selvig can't turn it off."

"I know that. But here's how it's going to work. I'm getting my stuff. I'm leaving it by my desk. I'm tying Buster to it." I said simply.

"When Fury gets here you leave." He said.

"When Fury gets here we all need to leave." I said, trying to get my point across without actually smacking him in the face. I wanted to make sure that they made it out. I wanted us to all leave together so we'd be safe and I'd know that they were safe. He must have gotten my point, and nodded. The look on his face, I couldn't tell if it was fear or desperation.

"I can't promise you anything." He said, "But we can try." I didn't know whether he meant about whether we could all leave together, or whether we'd be able to make it out alive. I tried to convince myself that it was the first one, though it was unsuccessful.

We spent the next 3 hours trying to figure out what to do. We had no idea what to do and we were running around like madmen while people were packing up their research and leaving. We were practically forcing everybody to leave immediately. They kept trying to convince me to leave as well, those scientists that had been originally terrified of working with me, now were begging me to go with them, probably out of obligation. I refused to leave, knowing that I'd be needed. I knew Dr. Selvig's readings well. I'd worked side-by-side with him as he did them.

"I talked to Fury. He said to hand your stuff and Buster over to a S.H.I.E.L.D agent on Phase 2. That way they'd be on a top priority truck. He said as soon as this blows over, he'll have it sent back." Phil said. I nodded and handed my bags, and a terrified Buster, off to one of the deserting guards.

"When did Fury say that he'd get here?" Dr. Selvig asked, briefly turning away from his research.

"He should be here within an hour." Phil said.

"Come get me where he gets here." I said, "I want to go up with you."

"Ok, I will." True to his word, as soon as word reached us that Fury's helicopter was in vicinity, Phil came running back and told me to hurry up. We ran down the stairs then over to the elevator. People were still rushing to get out of the building.

Phil and I tried to look professional as we stood waiting for Fury's helicopter to land, but inside we were freaking out. It was easier for him to look professional, he was wearing a suit. I was a kid with bedhead who dressed herself in the dark; I just looked like that normal tomboy New Yorker, everything from the windbreaker down to the guys sneakers.

Appearance was not top priority for anybody. We basically had to beg Dr. Selvig to change out of his bathrobe. We were more worried about finding a way to stop the Tesseract, or worse, explaining everything to Fury. It was impossible to explain what was going on with the Tesseract to ourselves. How were we supposed to make Fury understand what had happened?

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**Please review.**


	18. Chapter 12: Well, fuck

**This chapter is primarily script and me shoving Alex in there wherever I can. That means she's going to be stealing lines.**

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**Chapter 12: Well, Fuck**

As soon as the helicopter landed, Agent Hill and Director Fury walked out. They walked right up to us.

"How bad is it?" Fury asked.

"That's the problem sir, we don't know." Phil said. Fury saw that he was serious, and they quickly followed us down into the NASA center. When he called Fury, he hadn't really explained. He had kept it brief.

"Something's wrong with the Tesseract. We've ordered evac. You need to come see this." That was all that he told Fury before hanging up the phone.

We hurried down the stairs, passing every S.H.I.E.L.D guard and showing our badges. Then we hurried into the elevator.

"Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from the Tesseract four hour ago." Phil said as the elevator stopped. We started walking down the hallway, still flashing our badges quicker than The Doctor with his Psychic Paper.

"NASA didn't authorize Selvig to go into test phase." Fury pointed out.

"He wasn't testing it, he wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous advancement." Phil said.

"Everyone was asleep, then the alarms started going off and we rushed out to see it throwing off visible energy." I added.

"It just turned itself on?" Agent Hill asked.

"Exactly." I said, "Now nobody can turn it off. I shut down the whole system and it turned itself back on within 3 seconds."

"What are the energy levels now?" Fury asked.

"Climbing. When Selvig couldn't shut it down, we ordered evac." Phil said.

"How long to get everyone out?"

"Campus should be clear in the next half hour."

"Do better." Phil went off to supervise evac and Fury motioned for me to stay with them.

"Sir, evacuation maybe futile." Agent Hill said.

"We should tell them to go back to sleep?" Fury asked, almost sarcastically.

"If we can't control the Tesseract's energy, there may not be a minimum safe distance." She answered. She had a good point, that was one of the many worries we had.

"I need you to make sure that phase 2 prototypes are shipped out." Fury said, cutting her off before she could say anything else.

"Sir, is that really a priority right now?" Agent Hill asked.

"Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on." He said, "Clear out the tech below. Every piece of phase 2 on a truck and gone."

"Yes, sir." She said, but I could tell that she didn't want to do it. She walked back down the stairs and spoke to two S.H.I.E.L.D agents. "With me."

We continued to walk to the Tesseract Center. We were under a hundred feet of rock, I was terrified of what would happen if things went bad. We'd get crushed and die.

"Director Fury," I said quietly, "What exactly is Phase 2?" Phase 2 was what he had me working out. Some kind of weapon recreation. He had me and several other people working on prototypes for something.

"It's the next Phase of S.H.I.E.L.D technology. Right now, we're at Phase 1. We need to up it to Phase 2." He said. That didn't seem a plausible reason as to why Phase 2 was top priority. I wanted to call him out on it, but we had reached the lab.

"Talk to me, doctor." Fury called from across the room.

"Director." Dr. Selvig said, not taking his eyes off the Tesseract. Fury strode across the floor with me following quietly. Sometimes I was useful, sometimes things needed to be between them; now was one of those times, I just needed to wait.

"Is there anything we know for certain?" Fury asked.

"The Tesseract is misbehaving." Dr. Selvig said seriously. A scientist tried to poke the Tesseract with one of those sticks, he got shocked back.

"Is that supposed to be funny?" Fury asked, thinking that he was joking. He had _no_ idea how serious we were.

"No, it's not funny at all. The Tesseract is not only active, she's...misbehaving." Dr. Selvig said, unable to find a better word for it.

"How soon until you pull the plug?" Fury asked naïve to the fact that it was impossible to shut it off. He hadn't even really listened to what I had said in the hallway.

"She's an energy source." I interjected, "If we turn off the power, she turns it back on. I told you that. She managed to turn it back on within 3 seconds." For some reason, we referred to the Tesseract as a she while talking about it.

"If she reaches peak level..." Dr. Selvig said. Fury cut him off.

"We've prepared for this, doctor. Harnessing energy from space." Fury said. I chose that moment to interject again.

"We don't have the harness. Our calculations are far from complete." I said, picking up the file from the desk. I handed it to Fury and he only briefly flipped through it before giving it back. I put it back on the desk.

"Now she's throwing off interference, radiation. Nothing harmful, low levels of gamma radiation." Dr. Selvig said.

"That can be harmful." Fury said stoically. Gamma Radiation, at the levels we were receiving it, was not harmful. At the levels that Bruce Banner had gotten it, it was extremely harmful. After a few moments, Fury changed the subject.

"Where's Agent Barton?" He asked. Dr. Selvig pointed behind him and scoffed.

"The Hawk? Up in his nest, as usual." Dr. Selvig said. I looked up, Agent Barton was where he had been since we started working, watching us from the railings.

"Agent Barton, report." Fury called into his earpiece. Within a few seconds he was on the ground and walking with Fury.

"Alex!" Dr. Selvig called.

"On it." I said, following him around noting things he asked me to note. There was a lot of stuff to write down; most of it was how the Tesseract was acting.

"I gave you this detail so you could keep a close eye on things." I heard Fury say.

"Well I see things better from a distance." He said.

"Are you seeing anything that might set this thing off?" Fury asked. I was listening in on two conversations at once; the one between Fury and Barton and the one between Dr. Selvig and one of the NASA scientists.

"Doctor, it's spiking again." The NASA lady said. Dr. Selvig rushed to the computer and I turned my attention back to Fury and Barton.

"No one's come or gone. Both Selvig and the kid are clean. No contacts, no I.M.'s. If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't at this end." Agent Barton said. I was confused.

"At this end?" Fury asked.

"Yeah, the cube is a doorway to the other end of space, right?" He asked. He had remembered that while everyone else had forgotten about it. "Doors open from both sides."

"Christ." I muttered under my breath.

"What is it?" Fury asked, realizing something was wrong.

"We forgot about that." I said.

Almost the second I said that, more and more energy started coming off the Tesseract, swirling blue. We all stood there in shock as it swirled and quickly became a beam. The beam opened up into a dark portal. Slowly, somebody stepped out of the portal, and kneeled down; a dark haired man carrying a staff.

What was the first thing on my mind and out of my mouth when I realized who he was you might ask?

"Well, fuck."

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**Please review.**


	19. Chapter 13: The Disaster

**So, what does everybody think of this story so far.**

**By the way: I got a Mac, and my Mom refuses to pay for Microsoft Word on the Mac, so it might be a while before I update again, or I might be using my old Laptop just so I can write this story.**

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**Chapter 13: The Disaster**

We stood there, frozen, unsure of what to do or say. They didn't know who he was yet, I didn't know whether to tell them or not. I thought Dr. Selvig should have at least known. Slowly, the man stood up, letting them know what he looked like. The portal didn't close behind him.

"Sir, please put down the spear!" Fury yelled after a minute.

The spear comment, referenced the scepter in his hand, it had a blue crystal on the curved end. The blue crystal looked a lot like the Tesseract. Loki looked down at his spear. Then he looked up at Fury. He pointed the scepter at where Fury and Agent Barton were standing. The scepter shot a blue light at all of us, it was an explosive force, and it took out several workstations on its path.

Papers and files went flying. So did several people. I smacked into a desk and all the breath was forced out of my lungs. The way I hit the desk, I knew I'd have a bruise in the morning. I felt fine, mostly out of adrenaline, other than the familiar ripping sound of my windbreaker tearing. We all had to jump out of the way. I had to fight back the urge to scream.

"Stay down!" Fury yelled over the commotion of guns.

I did as he said and ducked behind a desk that hadn't been knocked out of the way. It was Dr. Selvig's desk. I ripped through the desk drawers, looking for the Tesseract files. As I hid behind the desk, I searched and searched until I found the ones I was looking for; the ones that had my readings and Dr. Selvig's readings. As the commotion behind me rose, I sat there clutching the files to my chest as I tried not to panic. I heard people scream as the got stabbed and energy blasts across the room.

I peeked out from behind the desk, watching Loki walk over to Agent Barton. I was frozen in my spot, seeing Loki with that scepter, it scared me so much. It looked too much like the Tesseract, and it made my paranoid feeling come back. Agent Barton stood up and tried to draw his gun. Loki grabbed his hand to keep him from pointing the gun at him. Either Loki was stronger than he looked or Agent Barton was too stunned to do anything. Loki looked at him, as he was about to kill him. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head.

"You…have heart." Loki said, before pressing the scepter where his heart would be. For a moment there was a blue glow. Then it stopped, Loki let go of his hand, and Agent Barton put the gun back in his scepter.

Loki did that again and again with several other people. As Loki was occupied with them, and Agent Barton, in his mind controlled state, was keeping an eye on the scientists behind Loki, Fury motioned for me to come forward. I crawled out from behind the desk with the files tucked into my windbreaker.

With it, I brought the Tesseract carrying case. I unlocked the case and motioned for Fury to take the Tesseract out of the machine. Fury didn't know how to do that, since we hadn't told him about that handy feature. I motioned for him just to pull it out, we didn't have time for any of the formal procedures. Fury slowly removed the Tesseract and winced at the burning. Fury helped me to my feet. His hand gripped onto my wrist as if he was afraid of losing me. We stood up and slowly started walking out of the room, hoping neither Loki nor his brainwashed agents would notice us.

"Please don't. I still need that." Loki said. Both of us froze.

"This doesn't have to get any messier." Fury said, slowly turning around. I had to turn around, since he wouldn't let go of my wrist.

"Of course it does. I've come too far for anything else. I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose." He said. Dr. Selvig took a few steps forward, causing me to sigh in annoyance.

"Loki? Brother of Thor?" Dr. Selvig said. He was thankfully ignored.

"We have no quarrel with your people." Fury said, trying to diffuse the situation before it got any worse. It was impossible. Half of the agents that were in the room had been murdered.

"An ant has no quarrel with a boot." Loki said.

"Are you planning to step on us?" Fury asked, taking a step forward. I tried to pull my wrist out of his grip.

"I come with glad tidings, of a world made free." Loki said.

"Free from what?" I asked, before Fury could.

"Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie." Loki said, looking at me with annoyance, "Once you accept that, in your heart..." He flipped around to face Dr. Selvig, who had gotten too close. He placed the scepter against Dr. Selvig's chest, causing the same effect. "You will know peace."

The portal on the ceiling and was growing larger by the second. I knew exactly what Fury was doing. He was stalling.

As Loki was occupied with Dr. Selvig, Fury addressed him. "Yeah, you say peace, I kind of think you mean the other kind of piece."

"Is this it sir?" I asked quietly, finally understanding what he was doing, "Is this the end?" I was afraid of what the answer would be.

"If it is," Fury said, turning to face me, "I apologize profusely for dragging you into this." Agent Barton realized what Fury was doing, and walked over to tell Loki. It would have been nice if the brainwashing had turned them into mindless zombies, but it kept their intelligence.

"Sir, Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow. Drop a hundred feet of rock on us." He said. He turned to face us, "He means to bury us."

"Like The Pharaohs of Old." Fury said. I could hear the portal behind us growing bigger and bigger. I had to act brave, I couldn't let them know how scared I was.

"He's right; the portal is collapsing in on itself. We've got maybe two minutes before this goes critical." Dr. Selvig said. He didn't look for any of his files, which was good, because I had all of them.

"How does he know that?" Fury asked.

"We tried to estimate how long the Tesseract could hold a portal open without interference. If we were right, we should have around 2 or 3 minutes before it collapses in on us." I said weakly. There was no guarantee that we were right.

Loki looked at Agent Barton. I didn't hear exactly what he said, but Agent Barton aimed his gun and shot. Fury got hit once in the stomach and I got hit in the side. We both dropped. Fury's grip on my wrist slacked. They walked past us and grabbed the case.

As soon as they were out of the room, Fury sat up and pulled out his walkie-talkie. The bullet, though it had only grazed me, had stunned me. Despite all the hell my family had put me through, I had never been shot. The pain was worse than I thought it was going to be.

"Hill, do you copy?" Fury yelled into the walkie-talkie, ripping the bullet out of his stomach. I slowly sat up, noticing that the bullet did more harm to my windbreaker than it did to me. "Barton is...compromised." He said. Fury hurried to his feet unsteadily, but pulled me up with him. The portal was getting bigger and bigger behind us. He stumbled out into the hallway, with me hurrying after him.

"He's got the Tesseract! Track it down!" He yelled.

We hurried out of the research center, down the hallway, under collapsing pipes. I screamed. Fury dragged me after him, making sure that I got out of it with him. Once we got above ground, the ground itself was collapsing. We ran towards the helicopter, which was waiting for us. We jumped inside and he closed the door. They took off just as the ground was collapsing. We were lucky. We barely made it. I looked out the window, at all the trucks hurriedly speeding away. Phil was on one of them.

We saw the truck that had Loki in the back. Fury stood up and opened the side door, taking out his gun. He repeatedly shot at Loki and the truck, missing every time. He may have hit the truck, but he never hit what we needed him to hit. Once Loki stood up and aimed his scepter at us, we knew we were in trouble. Using one strike, Loki shot the helicopter and caused it to go down.

I panicked; I didn't know what to do. Once the helicopter got close enough to the ground that the distance wouldn't kill us, Fury grabbed my arm and tuck-and-rolled out of it. We hit the ground side by side. He sat up and took out his walkie-talkie. I groaned in pain and sat up, removing the now bloody files from under my jacket.

"Director? Director Fury, do you copy?" Phil said frantically.

"The Tesseract is with the hostile force." Fury said calmly, acting as if the last 5 minutes hadn't happened, "I have men down. Hill?" He asked.

"A lot of men still under, don't know how many survivors." She said.

"Sound the general call, I want every living soul not working rescue looking for that briefcase."

"Roger that." Agent Hill said with a sigh. Then she hung up.

"Coulson, get back to base. This is a level seven." He said. "As of right now, we are at war." There was silence on the other end for a moment.

"What do we do?" Phil asked. Fury paused, as if wondering what to say.

"We restart the initiative." He said. We sat there in silence. He knew what that meant, and that wasn't exactly going to be easy.

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**Please review.**


	20. Chapter 14: Return to base

**Alex is going to serve a bigger part in finding the Tesseract than she did. In the old version she kind of waited until they were fighting and wandered off because she was suspicious about what Fury was doing. In this version, she has a lot more trust for Fury, even though she really doesn't trust people. That probably means she's going to have a lesser role in the action.**

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**Chapter 14: Return to base**

The silence was tense. Everybody was searching for something to say, not knowing how long it would be before help would arrive or how long until we actually knew what to do. Eventually Phil spoke again.

"Are you in need of assistance?" He asked, sounding genuinely worried about us.

"Yes. Both Alexandra and I are in need of medical assistance." Fury said.

"We'll swing by to pick you up." Phil said, then the line went dead. We sat there in silence for a while.

"Director?" I asked, "What do_ we_ do?" He sighed.

"We just wait for now. Then, I need you with me. To restart the initiative." He said.

"Will the council allow it?" I asked, wondering why he would need me for it in the first place.

"I don't give a damn what the council thinks. We are under extraterrestrial attack." Fury said. I nodded.

"Why do you need me?" I asked. He didn't say anything. "Director?" I prompted.

"Scientific consultant and safety." Fury said, "We'll need your help tracking Loki and Loki will come back, and it might be for you." He said. If he knew what I knew, he wasn't saying anything.

"I'm sorry." I said, feeling guilty.

"For what?" He asked, though he probably knew already.

"I knew who he was." I said after a moment of silence, "I knew who he was, but I was so scared that I didn't say anything. I should—"

"You did what any sensible person would do in a situation like that—not to mention exactly what I told you to do. You shut up and hid. That was the right thing to do." He said. I handed him the files I had grabbed.

"It's not much." I said, "But it's the basic outline of our research. The rest of its either on the S.H.I.E.L.D database or on my laptop, which is on a truck right now." He nodded.

"We can deal with that later. But at the moment, we need to get medical assistance." He said.

"Ok. That sounds nice." I murmured quietly, going back to lying on the grass. It was going to take a while.

When they finally got here, I sat up, thinking it was an enemy, despite the fact that it was a marked S.H.I.E.L.D vehicle. When it stopped, Phil jumped out and I hurried to get to my feet. I thought Fury was going to jump with joy. It was only Agent Hill and Phil in the back of the truck. I just jumped up and got in the back as quickly as I could, despite the fact that it hurt like hell. We were freezing, in pain, and we were at war; the day couldn't exactly get any worse.

I just couldn't wait to get back to S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters. I wanted to get my dog back, I wanted to get my stuff back, I wanted to take a shower, I wanted to sleep in a bed, and I would have been happily pricked by a needle if it meant that I could get pain meds.

"You'll all be promoted to Level 7." Fury said, "As of this moment, all Level 6 S.H.I.E.L.D agents of high importance are being promoted to Level 7."

"Who are S.H.I.E.L.D agents of importance?" Agent Hill asked.

"As of the moment, I can only think of you 3, Agent Romanoff, and Agent Sitwell." Fury said. They were the only prominent S.H.I.E.L.D agents I could remember.

"What do we do for the time being?" Phil asked.

"Right now, we focus on getting back to headquarters. Then, we'll worry about finding them." Fury said.

"Director, do you think I could call somebody—to let them know that I'm not coming back for a while?" I asked.

"Yes." Fury said, "If you agree to let us monitor the call." I was wary of that for a second, thinking that somebody would say something stupid.

"Ok." I said, knowing that I had to place the call no matter what. I had to let them know that I was ok, I had to let them know that I wasn't coming back, and I had to make Dina clear out my stuff from the apartment before either S.H.I.E.L.D came back or Uncle Trent decided to pay me a visit.

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**Please review.**


	21. Chapter 15: Contact

**What the heck is wrong with FanFiction. I put this doc in. I went to put in the little divider line thingy and it turned to lines of codes.**

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**Chapter 15: Contact**

True to his word, Fury had them send my stuff back to me. By the time they were done patching me up Buster was waiting for me impatiently. By the time I had checked Buster over and made sure they hadn't hurt him, Fury had stolen my phone from me and plugged it into some kind of station.

"Go ahead." He said. I hadn't planned on doing it right away, but he was right, it was 5:00 am and I had to go ahead and call them. I walked over to the station.

"Who do you plan on calling?" Agent Hill asked.

I thought for a second, I hadn't really put much thought into it. If I called Robert, Uncle Trent might intercept him. If I called Dina, she might not know what I'm asking her to do. Robert and I knew there was a chance of government agents coming to get us, because of who our family was, and we kind of came up with a code. Dina knew some of the codes, but she didn't know enough.

"My cousin." I said. I went ahead and called Robert's Cell. After 3 rings the phone picked up, which was saying something for him.

"Hello." A tired voice yawned.

"Robert." I said.

"Alex!" He said, shocking himself awake, "Where have you been?"

"Internship." I said. He knew what that meant. The others just thought I was good at lying.

"How long's the internship?" He asked. That was his way of asking, 'How long are you stuck there and is there anything I can do'.

"Probably a few more weeks. But here's the thing. I've got the landlady watching my apartment; do you think you could pick up the cats?" I asked. He knew I didn't just mean the cats.

"Cats?" mouthed Phil.

"Shut it." I mouthed back.

"Yeah, why?" He asked.

"Well, it's taking a little longer than I planned and I didn't prepare her to watch anything for the long haul." I said.

"Ok." He said, "I'll get right on that. Is there anything else I need to do?"

"Just make sure everything's turned off and nothing's broken." I said. He knew exactly what I meant: Grab my stuff and hide it.

"Ok, I'll go." He said, then he hung up. More likely than not, Uncle Trent would know that I called and ask why. Robert would tell him that I got an internship and that I asked him to go give the cats to Dina. He'd give everything I didn't want them to find to Dina, and she'd hid it in the safe her Father built into her closet.

"Is there anyone else you need to call?" Agent Hill asked.

"Yes, my landlady and my cousin's girlfriend." I said. She raised an eyebrow.

"I'm having him give her the cats. His Dad's not going to let him keep them there. My landlady doesn't know who she is, but she'll let Robert in."

I dialed another number, the front desk of my apartment building. I had to leave a message.

"Hello, it's Alexandra. I'm going to be interning longer than I thought. So Robert's stopping by to get the cats. Don't worry about watching them." I said, then I hung up. Then I dialed Dina's number. It picked up after a ring and thankfully she read the caller ID.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT ALEX?! IT'S 5:06!" Dina yelled.

"Robert's dropping off the cats." I said.

"Wait what?" She asked.

"My internship's taking longer than I thought. He's dropping the cats off at your place." I said.

"Oh." Dina said. It had finally hit her what was going on.

"You know how to take care of them. It shouldn't be that hard." I said.

"Wrap it up." Phil mouthed.

"Got to go deliver coffee, bye." I said, hanging up the phone.

"Seriously?" Phil asked.

"Well that was basically what I was doing." I snapped, "Now what do we do?"

"We go tell Fury that we're done and hope that the council is done yelling at him." Phil said.

"Good choice." Agent Hill muttered as we left the room. But no, as soon as we got there they were still talking.

"This is out of line, Director. You're dealing with forces you can't control." One of the men on the screen said.

"You ever been in a war, Councilman? In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?" Fury asked. Phil and I watched from the doorway. He turned around to notice us, and motioned for me to walk closer. He pushed me forward a bit, so I wasn't trying to hide behind him.

"Is this your consultant?" The woman asked.

"Yes." Fury said.

"Do you really think your consultant could withstand the perils of an intergalactic threat?" The man asked, almost yelling. I was confused. What had Fury been telling them about me?

"Yes. Miss Harbor has proved to be a valuable asset and a talented mind in the field of science. She is an essential part of this." He said.

"_I'm_ essential?" I asked quietly, shock evident on my voice.

"Alexandra Harbor." The man said flatly. He was addressing me.

"Yes sir." I said, trying to be formal.

"Daughter of Mackenzie Harbor?" He asked.

"Yes sir." I said again. Then he looked at Fury.

"How do you know she won't steal intel or technology?" He demanded. If it wasn't for my family's track record, I would have been more offended than I already was.

"She has proven to be trustworthy and has no benefit from her family's business." Fury said.

"How do you know that?" The woman asked.

"Within the past 3 months, I have been threatened, shot at, blackmailed, and pushed out of a 3rd story window by my Uncle." I said flatly, "I've had over $40,000 stolen from my college fund, had him threaten to murder everybody I had talked to within the last year, and stab me repeatedly in the shoulder. All because I didn't want to tell him that his son had a girlfriend. Just imagine what he did to his own kid."

"You're saying that you wouldn't trade information?" The man asked.

"Why on earth would I help the people that play a big part in the reason why the New York underground is so dangerous?" I asked rhetorically. Nobody said anything.

"Alexandra." Fury warned, knowing that I was starting to piss them off.

"I worked on Project Pegasus for 2 weeks. I can tell you the exact time that we ran a test on the Tesseract. I can tell you exactly what each test was. I can tell you the results to every test." I said.

"Then explain." The man said.

"We ran exactly 29 tests on the Tesseract." I said, "I noticed that Dr. Selvig made a few mathematical errors and a few inconsistencies on one of his reports. Dr. Selvig and I rewrote the test so that it was perfectly sound and used it to test the Tesseract, which worked without fail. Dr. Selvig and I noted that the Tesseract's test results were consistent for the first 28 days of testing. On the 29th day, the test results started changing. With how small the change was, we thought it was a mistake on the scanner, so we worked on fixing the scanner. It turned out to be Loki."

"You're saying that this Asgard has declared war on our planet?" The man asked.

"Not Asgard. Loki." Fury said insistently. He must have been telling them that for a while.

"He can't be working alone. What about the other one? His brother." The woman asked.

"Our intelligence says, Thor is not a hostile. But he's worlds away, we can't depend on him to help either. It's up to us." Fury said.

"Which is why you should be focusing on phase 2, it was designed for exactly..." Fury cut the man off.

"Phase 2 isn't ready, our enemy is. We need a response team." Fury insisted.

"The Avengers Initiative was shut down." The man said.

"This isn't about The Avengers." Fury said. It was, it really was. That's what he had told me while we were waiting for rescue.

"We're running the world's greatest covert security network and you're gonna leave the fate of human race to a handful of freaks." The man said. He looked at me when he said freaks. I guessed that he knew that I'd play a part in it.

"I'm not leaving anything to anyone. We need a response team." Fury insisted. After he regained his composure he spoke again, "These people may be isolated, unbalanced even, but I believe with the right push they can be exactly what we need."

"You believe?" The woman asked.

"War isn't won by sentiment, Director." The man said, sounding disgusted at the very thought.

"No, it's won by soldiers."

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**Please review.**


	22. Journal Entry 7

**Ok, so the chapters should be consistently around 1,000-1,200. I think last time my longest was like 4,000 words. That's probably not going to happen to me again. Just expect chapters within that range/maybe a little more.**

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May 30th, 2012

5:00 am

Tired and Bored as fuck

Wants to go home

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Dear Journal,

So much freaking paperwork!

I almost died today, or was it yesterday. I don't know it was like 1 or 2 am today or something stupid like that. Do I really have to do all this paperwork? We're busy, we've got a lot to do. We've got to figure this out and get whoever we're going to get. I'm fairly certain it's Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.

I don't know, because I didn't see The Avengers trailers or commercials. I typically don't watch live TV, and have Netflix. I haven't gone to a movie since the last Marvel Movie came out, which was 2011. I usually find other ways of watching TV shows that I want to.

I thought 'Wow, this movie sounds awesome, I don't want to get it spoiled for me'. Well, I recently learned that I made the world's dumbest decision, thinking it was a smart one.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Not only is the council filled with a bunch of idiots with sticks up their asses, but they're pretty demeaning. They didn't want to listen to a single thing I said until they realized that I knew more about the Tesseract project than they did.

I've got to go, I've got to do MORE paperwork. I hate paperwork, I hate this.

I don't like this at all. I still kind of want to see them in action.

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\- Alex

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**Please review, I work hard and I want people to tell me whether they like it or not.**


	23. Chapter 16: Recruiting the Team

**Ok, so starting at this point, it's probably going to be extremely similar to the other story, but this was mostly me trying to figure out what to do with Alex, realizing that a lot of the stuff I had her do was too farfetched even for FanFiction.**

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**Chapter 16: Recruiting the team**

**Steve Rogers aka Captain America**

Fury insisted that I go with him to recruit Steve Rogers. He thought that since Steve Rogers knew who I was, that the knowledge that I was ok and that S.H.I.E.L.D hadn't harmed me might help him make the decision that Fury wanted him to make. That meant that at 10:00 pm the next night, I had to go with him to recruit Steve Rogers.

We had planned on just driving by his apartment building that morning, but with all the paperwork and statements we needed to fill out, we didn't get the chance until then. By the time that we actually got to go to his apartment building, he wasn't there. Fury unlocked his door; which was a little strange, considering he had a key and yet I somehow got back to my apartment before they found me; we set a debriefing package on his kitchen counter. I thought that we were just going to have to leave it at that.

Thankfully, Fury had given him a flip phone, and they put a tracking device in there. He had apparently gotten the use of the flip phone down to a science, but they didn't want to give him an iPhone, mostly because they didn't want to worry about him messing around with apps and stuff. He didn't even know what an iPhone was yet, or what Wi-Fi was, so they hadn't bothered to teach him about it.

He was in a gym somewhere near his apartment building. It was just down the street. We could have just walked down his street and found that out. But for some reason, you had to take the lazy was out of it. Ah, S.H.I.E.L.D, making everything 10 times more complicated than it has to be.

He was pummeling the absolute shit out of a punching bag that looked about half his size. He looked angry as he punched it harder and harder. For a while, we stood there watching, just to see what he was going to do. With one final punch, he knocked it off its chain and it flew across the room. He bent down to pick up another one, and Fury spoke.

"Trouble sleeping?" He asked.

"I slept for seventy years, sir. I think I've had my fill." He responded, not looking up.

"Then you should be out, celebrating, seeing the world." Fury said, walking over to see him.

"I went under, the world was at war, I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost." He said sadly.

"We've made some mistakes along the way. Some very recently." He said. He looked down at the file Fury had in his hands.

"You here with a mission, sir?" He asked.

"I am." He said.

"Trying to get me back in the world?" Steve asked.

"Trying to save it." I said. Steve looked up at me, surprised to see me there. I strode across the floor, going to stand next to Fury. It was obvious that we were on the same side, after hitting the desk and the gunshot had ruined my windbreaker, I ditched it in favor of a S.H.I.E.L.D jacket that had more insulation than a parka. I held out my hand and Fury gave me the file. I opened it, and sat it down on the bench.

"Hydra's secret weapon." He said.

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you. He thought…what we think; the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs." Fury said.

"Who took it from you?" Steve asked, knowing why we were here.

"He's called Loki. He's not from around here." Fury said, not knowing how else to explain it, "There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

"At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me." He said.

"Ten bucks says you're wrong." Fury said. Something told me that he'd be paying those 10 bucks. He turned to pick up the punching bag. "There's a debriefing package waiting for you back at your apartment." He picked up the punching bag and started walking out of the room. "Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

"You should have left it in the ocean." Steve said, before leaving the gym and leaving us standing there with the file.

**Tony Stark aka Iron Man**

Within ½ an hour, Fury dropped me off with Phil. He was going to talk with Tony Stark. For some reason Phil thought, that since I ran into Tony Stark, he might need some closure as to why a kid freaked out upon the very sight of him.

The second we were in the lobby, Phil tried calling Tony Stark's number. JARVIS tried to patch us through, but came back saying that Tony Stark was out. Phil insisted that JARVIS patched him through, but with no avail. We knew he was hiding from us in there and that he was just avoiding anything S.H.I.E.L.D at the moment. Phil continually tried to call him, and it still didn't work.

"He's not answering." Phil said, sounding exasperated. I sighed, realizing that I'd have to help him out with this.

"Do you know how to hack past protocols?" I asked.

"Uh…not off the top of my head." Phil said. I ripped his phone from him and tried to call one last time. I didn't work, so I went with my next plan. We'd go up anyway. We got into the elevator and Phil hit the button for the floor. We were maybe halfway up there before the elevator stopped.

"Sir I'm afraid that you and the young lady are not allowed to do that." JARVIS said.

"Stop talking." I said, messing around with a few wires in the elevator. The lights flashed for a brief second.

"Sir, the telephone. I'm afraid my protocols are being overwritten." JARVIS said, telling it to Stark.

"Stark, we need to talk." Phil said into the phone.

"You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark, please leave a message." Tony said into the phone.

"Pretty good." I said quietly.

"This is urgent." Phil said.

"Then leave it urgently." He said. At that point, we were at the floor, and the doors opened. He turned off his phone.

"Security breach." Tony said, holding up his hands. He turned to face Pepper and pointed at her, "That's on you."

"Mr. Stark." Phil said.

"Phil! Come in." Pepper said, standing up and walking over to say hello.

"Phil?" Tony asked, in confusion.

"We can't stay." Phil said.

"Uh...his first name is Agent." Tony said, standing up and pointing at him. He walked over with two glasses.

"Hey, aren't you the kid—"" He started.

"Yep, S.H.I.E.L.D issue. I'm not a very smart person." I said.

"Come on in, we're celebrating." Pepper said.

"Which is why he can't stay." Tony said through gritted teeth.

"We need you to look this over." He said, holding up a file. The file held everything he needed to know, everything from The Tesseract to me. "Soon as possible."

"I don't like being handed things." He said.

"That's alright, 'cause I love to be handed things. So, let's trade." Pepper said. She gave Phil the glass, took the file, took the glass from Tony, and handed him the file.

"That works too." I said.

"Official consulting hours are between eight and five every other Thursday." He said.

"This isn't a consultation." Phil said quickly.

"Is this about The Avengers?" She asked, causing both Phil and I to stare at her. "Which I...I know nothing about." She added quickly.

"The Avengers Initiative was scrapped, I thought. And I didn't even qualify." He said, walking over to his workstation.

"I didn't know that either." Pepper said.

"Yeah, apparently I'm volatile, self-obsessed, don't play well with others." He said bitterly.

"That I did know." She said.

"I think everybody knows that." I said.

"This isn't about personality profiles anymore." Phil said.

"What are you doing in this file?" He said, looking up from the file and staring at me. I rolled my eyes, not willing to explain anything else to him.

"Read it. Find out. It explains more than I want it to." I said simply. At the moment, I just wanted to get this part over with and see what we'd have to do next. Knowing Marvel, and the fact that there was supposed to be a movie about it, I knew that there would be a big conflict of some kind.

"Whatever. Miss Potts, got a minute?" He asked, waving her over. She walked over and sat down beside him at the workstation. "You know, I thought we were having a moment." He said quietly.

"I was having twelve percent of a moment." She said, that must have had some kind of meaning for them. She looked back at me and Phil. "This seems serious, they're pretty shaken."

"How did you notice? Why is he Phil?" He asked. She didn't answer, just looked down at the file.

"What is all this?" She asked.

"This is uh..." He flicked his wrist and spread the profiles all over the computer screens. "This." They stared at the profiles. There was one for Bruce Banner. There was one for Steve Rogers. There was one for Thor. There was one for Agent Romanoff. There was one for Agent Barton. There was one for Loki. There was one for me. Everybody.

"I'm going to take the jet to D.C. tonight." She said, not taking her eyes off the profiles.

"Tomorrow." He said. She shook her head.

"You have homework. You have a lot of homework."

"Well, what if I didn't?" He asked.

"If you didn't?" She asked. I wish we had gotten out of there right then and not looked back.

"Yeah."

"You mean if you finished?" She asked. He nodded. "Well, um...then" She moved to whisper in his ear. Unfortunately, Phil and I were close enough that we could hear what she was saying. He looked away, so he would have to face them.

"Gross. Very gross." I said.

"Square deal. It's the last date." He said. She kissed him.

"Work hard." She said. Then she walked over to me and Phil as we walking into the elevator. "Is there any chance you're driving by LaGuardia?" She asked.

"I can drop you." Phil said.

"What about you and the cellist, is that still a thing?" She asked.

"Nah, she moved back to Portland." He said.

"What? Boo."

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**Please review.**


	24. Journal Entry 8

**This story is already longer than the original version, so expect more than 30 chapters on this one. I'll try not to make it more than 50 or even 40 chapters.**

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June 2nd, 2012

Weirded out

Still wants to go home

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Dear Journal,

I wish I didn't overhear that. That was so weird on so many levels. But then again, I'm 11. Maybe it's not that weird for adults. That's not what the look on Phil's face told me, but maybe that's how most non-government agent adults are.

Fury says that we might be screwed. We don't know what to do, we don't know how to find Loki. If we could rough out a tracking algorithm, then we'd be good, but that would take time, and we don't have that much time.

As complicated as it would have to be, it would probably take S.H.I.E.L.D around 2 weeks to create something like that. We don't have two weeks. We maybe had 2 days.

Got to go, apparently we're picking up Steve Rogers and heading for the helicarrier. That should be fun.

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\- Alex

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**Please review.**


	25. Chapter 17: The Helicarrier

**Keep in mind that this story might be upwards of 40 chapters. It should have around 30 actual chapters and 8 Journal Entries. That means, that there aren't going to be anymore journal entries.**

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**Chapter 17: The Helicarrier**

The ride to the Helicarrier wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be a lot of armed guards sitting there next to us because that's the way everybody's been acting for the past few days.

"So this Dr. Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?" Steve asked, flipping through Bruce Banner's file.

"A lot of people were. You were the world's first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula." Phil said.

"Didn't really go his way, did it?" He asked.

"Not so much. When he's got that thing though, guy's like a Stephen Hawking." Phil said. Steve just stared.

"He's like a very smart person." I said, "We really need to get you up to date on everything." He nodded.

"What else do I need to catch up on?" He asked.

"Every single pop culture reference from the past 70 years." I said seriously. "You're not going to understand half of what I say." Phil seemed to be ignoring us. After a few moments of awkward silence, mostly because of him, he spoke.

"I gotta say, it's an honor to meet you, officially. I sort of met you, I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping." Phil said. Then he realized what he had just said. Steve just looked at him in amusement and I felt bad for him.

"I mean, I was...I was present while you were unconscious from the ice." He said, extremely flustered, "You know, it's really, it's just a...just a huge honor to have you on board." He said, quickly changing the subject.

"Well, I hope I'm the man for the job." Steve said, going to stand by the doorframe between us and the cockpit.

"Oh, you are. Absolutely. Uh...we've made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input." He said.

"Phil, please stop talking." I said, trying to keep him from embarrassing himself.

"The uniform?" He asked, sounding a little shocked, "Aren't the stars and stripes a little...old fashioned?"

"Everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashioned." Phil said.

"Not everybody's given up." I said. They turned to look at me.

"What do you mean by that?" Steve asked.

"Some people still have hope. Maybe, all of you together, will be what they need." I said, speaking for myself and for everybody I knew, "Just the thought that somebody out there is willing to defend us—"" I paused, nit sure what else I was going to say, "Maybe that'll be enough to give back some of the faith in humanity."

**15 minutes later**

I don't know whether I helped, or if I made it worse, but I think I did some good. Nobody spoke until we got onto the helicarrier, docked, and got off. Finally seeing it fully, I thought that it was one of the most amazing things I had seen. When I had gotten there, it had been pitch black and I was too nervous to really do anything. Agent Romanoff, who had finally arrived, walked over to us.

"They need you on the bridge." She said to Phil. He ran off, and she stuck with us. We started walking towards the bridge.

"There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice. I thought Coulson was gonna swoon." She said, I tried not to snicker, "Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?" She asked.

"Trading cards?" Steve repeated, sounding confused.

"Trading cards?" I repeated, about to start laughing.

"They're vintage, he's very proud." She said seriously. I was laughing harder than I should have been. Steve just stared at me, not understanding why I found it hilarious.

"He's a fanboy." I said, still laughing. Agent Romanoff nodded.

"And you." She said, turning to me, "You freaked out a lot of people when you showed up." I wasn't that surprised, especially since everybody asked me the same story at least 500 times.

"Kinda freaked myself out. I thought I was going crazy." I responded, "This isn't exactly something you see every day."

"That's not surprising." She said.

Finally, we figured out where we were headed. About 20 feet from us was a nervous man pacing between the fighter jets and turning around every time an agent walked past.

"I'm guessing this is Dr. Banner." I said. She nodded.

"Dr. Banner." Steve said, walking up to shake his hand. They shook hands even thought Dr. Banner looked like he'd rather be doing anything else.

"Oh, yeah. Hi. They told me you'd be coming." Dr. Banner said nervously.

"Word is you can find the cube." Steve said.

"Is that the only word on me?" Dr. Banner asked.

"Only word I care about." Steve said.

"Must be strange for you, all of this." Dr. Banner said, changing the subject.

"Well, this is actually kind of familiar." Steve said. Dr. Banner gestured to me.

"And you?" He asked.

"I like this better than being under a hundred feet of rock for 2 weeks." I said.

"Gentlemen," She said, walking towards them, "You may wanna step inside in a minute. It's gonna get a little hard to breath."

They had no idea what the Helicarrier really was. They looked startled when it started to shake. Agents began running around, tying down fighter jets and putting on air masks.

"Is this is a submarine?" Steve asked.

"Really? They wanted me in a submerged pressurized metal container?" Dr. Banner asked. We all moved closer to the edge. The propellers were rising from the water and it started to lift into the air. "Oh, no. This is much worse."

After that, we went inside. Once inside, they were even more impressed. It was wonderful. The area where all the agents computers were was shaped like the S.H.I.E.L.D logo, the computers were extremely high-tech.

"Gentlemen." Fury said, turning around. Steve walked towards him, still staring at everything. He handed him the $10.

"Doctor, thank you for coming." Fury said, walking towards Dr. Banner who was still pacing nervously.

"Thanks for asking nicely." He said, "So, uh...how long am I staying?"

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear." Fury said.

"Where are you with that?" Dr. Banner asked. Fury pointed to us, telling one of us that we had to explain.

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us." I said, telling him the spiel I had been told.

"That's still not gonna find them in time." Agent Romanoff said. She had a point. We weren't close enough.

"In other words, we're not close." I said, "Even if we get every camera, phone, and laptop it's not going to be enough. We're not even sure what continent he's on."

"You have to narrow the field." He said moving towards us, "How many spectrometers do you have access to?"

"How many are there?" Fury asked.

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays." He said.

"You could rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition." I said, impressed. He looked surprised that I knew what he was talking about.

"At least we could rule out a few places." He said, "And I'm guessing she's the consultant." Fury nodded.

"We think she'd be of use." He said.

"I was stuck underground for 2 weeks helping them with the Tesseract Project." I said, "I know more about this than I really want to."

"Do you have somewhere for us to work?" He asked.

"I can help?" I asked. He nodded.

"Agent Romanoff, would you show them to the laboratory, please." Fury asked.

"You're gonna love it, Doc. You got all the toys."

**Several hours (Wasn't keeping track) later**

Making a tracking algorithm was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. With both me and Dr. Banner working on it, it didn't take as long as I thought it was going to. But then again, I was working with a genius and I was able to memorize his plans once he finished them. All we had to wait for was Agent Sitwell to find Loki with it.

Around that point, we were over Europe. Fury knew that he wasn't going to stick to America. We were all standing around waiting for him to show up. That meant that I got to hear a few interesting conversations. Like two S.H.I.E.L.D agents arguing about Galaga. Or the Trading Cards. The Trading Cards were my favorite.

"I mean, if it's not too much trouble." Phil said.

"No, no. It's fine." Steve said. It seemed like he just wanted to get out of that conversation.

"It's a vintage set." Phil said proudly, "It took me a couple of years to collect them all. Near mint, slight foxing around the edges, but…" The beeping noise from the computer made him stop.

"We got a hit!" Agent Sitwell yelled, "Sixty seven percent match. Wait, cross match, seventy nine percent." Once we were finally able to see him, it was a 100% match. He was standing in front of a building I could remember from somewhere.

"Location?" Phil asked.

"Stuttgart, Germany. 28, Konigstrasse. He's not exactly hiding." Agent Sitwell said. From the look on my face, I think they knew what I was thinking.

"Have you been there?" Agent Sitwell asked.

"Once, a while ago." I said, "I think that was one of the only family trips I went on that didn't end in disaster."

"Do you think you could help us with this?" Fury asked.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked, knowing that he wanted me to use my family's status.

"Can you find a way into that party, to keep an eye on Loki to find out what he's planning?" Fury asked.

"You want to find out what he wants before you capture him." I stated, finally understanding the plan.

"Exactly." Fury said, "Do you think you could find a way into that party?" I nodded.

"Yeah, I probably could."

"Then you're up." He said.

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**Please review. **

**I work very hard on this story, and I would like to get feedback to see what people think. I want to know what you like and what you don't like about this story, so either I can fix it, or use it for future reference. I know that nobody seems to read my author's notes, but please review if you see this one.**


	26. Chapter 18: The ground running

**This website is pissing me off a bit. Not much has changed from when I started writing here, but the little that has makes me want to scream. The little divider line thing no longer shows up when I write my author's notes. I have to save it, close it, and reopen it to put it in. Then, sometimes when I do that, the story turns into code and either I have to re-copy the story and rewrite the author's note or close it and open it again.**

**If you see this author's note, that means that I finally figured it out.**

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**Chapter 18: The ground running**

I was having a lot of trouble trying to remember my way around Stuttgart. I had been 9 and I has spent the entire ride fighting with Robert about a video game. I didn't even look up until we got there. Some tourists took pity on me and decided to help.

"Do you need directions?" She asked.

"Yes." I said, "Do you know which way the Art Gala is?" I didn't like stopping to ask for help, but that was the only way I could find my way there without getting lost again.

"Just take a left." She said, "And go down that road."

"Thank you ma'am." I said, before running off in that direction. After taking a left and going down that road, I found my way there. Now, all I had to worry about was getting in.

A fancy suit and a smile had easily gotten Loki in there, but a tomboy dressed in street clothes wasn't going to get me in there. That was the first trouble I got into. I went to walk up the stairs, I was stopped by a large man in a suit.

"Kein Zutritt." The guard said. I tried to remember the few phrases of German I knew off the top of my head.

"No admittance." I muttered under my breath.

"Jetzt gehen." He said.

"Leave now." I repeated quietly. The man looked at me quizzically, signifying that he didn't speak English. I didn't know how I was supposed to get in. I didn't speak enough German and they didn't speak English. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Geh weg." He said.

"Go away." I repeated again. He looked like he was about to use force, but I didn't get the chance.

"Die junge Dame ist mit mir." A voice said. The guard looked shocked. I looked up, to see the person I least expected. I took the earpiece out of my ear, knowing that somebody would be listening.

"Dad?" I asked.

"Come on Alex." He said, leading me inside the building, "And remind me to teach you German." I should have known that he was going to be there. Every time there was a big event, every time there was a chance for them to get money or something they could use to get money, they'd go for it. Typically it was Uncle Trent, so I didn't expect him to be there. He dragged me up a flight of stairs to stand by a railing. I could tell that I was in trouble.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, going into overprotective Dad mode.

"I could ask you the same question." I said. He sighed.

"Alex, now's really not the time for this. You know why I'm here. Now why are you here?" He asked.

"I got in some trouble." I said. He sighed.

"What kind of trouble?" He asked, knowing that it couldn't be good if I was on another continent.

"Government." I said reluctantly.

"What kind of government?" He asked.

"S.H.I.E.L.D." I said. He looked shocked.

"S.H.I.E.L.D?" He asked.

"You remember?" I asked. He didn't say anything. "Dad. Do you remember?" I asked.

"Yes. Yes I do. But that's not the point Alex. What did you do to get in trouble?" He seemed genuinely concerned.

"I got caught. I realized something was wrong. I tried to figure it out. S.H.I.E.L.D came after me." I said.

"Alex you've got to be careful. Nick Fury will do anything to anyone to get what he needs." He said.

"No he's not Dad, I know more about this than you think I do. You didn't even notice that your daughter has been missing for over 2 weeks." I said.

"You need to come back with me. After the party you can come back with me and go back to—" He said quickly.

"No, you need to get out of here and get out now. Something big's about to happen, and you can't be here when it does." I said. I was worried that while they were trying to capture Loki, they'd find him and get him.

"I can't just leave Alex, I have a job to do." He said.

"Do you trust me?" I asked. He nodded. "Then I need you to get out now. I'm safe."

"Do you really think you're safe?" He asked, "Do you really think they won't turn right around and double cross you? Do you really think they're any better than The Seven?"

"Yes. I may not trust these people, but I trust them more than I trust The Seven. After everything that's happened to me. Everything you let them do, because I was a kid and screwed up, _wrecked _my ability to trust people. It absolutely wrecked my self-esteem. And here I am risking everything telling you to leave and you just won't do it." I snapped.

"Alex…" He started.

"If you have any faith in me, any faith whatsoever, then just listen," I said, begging him to do what I said, "Just go while you can unless you want something bad to happen to you."

I turned back to the railing, not wanting to talk to him. After a moment, he did what I said, muttering how he'd think of something to tell them. Even as a conman, he wouldn't rat his own daughter out. Not after the 'Getting thrown out a 3rd story window' thing Uncle Trent did. Man that guy has anger issues. And Hulk strength.

I couldn't deal with him most of the time. He didn't trust his own kid, understandably. He didn't trust people because of his profession. I didn't trust people because I was constantly lied to by my own family. On top of everything they'd ever done to me, he was the only one who had never tried to kill me. And Don Rio, but he's not really family. I just couldn't deal with the thought of him in prison for this.

When I turned back, I couldn't spot him in the crowd. While I searched the crowd for him, I felt somebody brush past me, and I turned around. It was Loki. I didn't say anything, or let him see my face. My heart was racing, and all I felt was fear. He didn't notice, and just walked around for a second. I put my earpiece back on and moved behind a pillar.

"I found him." I said.

"Why haven't you been answering?" Phil asked, sounding worried.

"I had some trouble getting in." I lied, "I had to improvise for a while."

"Ok, what is he doing?" Phil asked.

"I don't know yet. He's just walking around." I said. Loki started walking down the staircase. He flipped his cane, which had the blue crystal of his scepter. The guards moved to stop him and he hit one in the face with it. The music stopped, and people screamed. "Shit."

"What is it?" Phil asked.

"Get them on the ground. Now." I said. Phil stopped talking and I watched the scene with interest.

Loki grabbed the man who was throwing the party by the front of his shirt. People quickly moved away from them. The man looked startled and started flailing as Loki dragged him towards a tile table. He threw the man down on the table and took something out of his suit pocket. He pressed a button and it turned into a drill. He took it down on the man's eye while he twitched and people screamed. People started running and I took that as an excuse to get out with them.

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**Please review.**


	27. Chapter 19: Stuttgart, Germany

**I tried to make Alex a little more ****relatable in this story. I have her explain her actions a bit.**

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**Chapter 19: Stuttgart, Germany**

Once I got outside, I saw how everyone was running like a madman. Loki walked out the door and his armor materialized around him. Cop cars were rushing to the scene, Loki pointed his scepter at them, and it caught on fire. It skidded on the front number before it crashed.

"Kneel before me." He said. Everybody ignored him and continued to run around.

"I said. Kneel!" He yelled. Several copies of him appeared at every corner. Everybody, including myself, started to kneel.

"What's going on?" Phil asked.

"Shh…" I said shakily before taking the earpiece out and cramming it into my pocket.

"Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity." He said smiling, "You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

The entire crowd was silent, too scared to do or say anything about it. Near me, an old man stood up. Nobody tried to stop him.

"Not to men like you." The elderly man said.

"There are no men like me." Loki said, taking a step forward.

"There are always men like you." He said.

If Loki knew what the man meant, he didn't say anything about it. I wasn't close enough to do anything, but I wished that somebody would have just yanked that old man out of the way before Loki did anything. I took my chances and stood up. If that man was going to die, for something that he desperately believed in, I wasn't going to let him do it alone.

"No matter what you do, no matter who you think you're better than, there will be men like you. There always have." I said.

"Ah, the little girl." He said, "There are no men like me. Go stand near your elder, child." Neither of us moved. "Go stand near your elder, child." He repeated. I did as he said, knowing that it would be worse if I didn't.

"Look to your elder and the child, people. Let them be an example." Loki said. He lifted his scepter, and the crystal lit up. But before it could reach us, Steve jumped in front of him, in full Captain America uniform, and blocked it with his shield. The man and I were thrown to the ground. I felt pain shoot through my side, but I ignored it.

"You know, the last time I was in Germany, and saw a man standing above everyone else, we ended up disagreeing." Steve said.

"The soldier. The man out of time." Loki said. The copies of Loki disappeared and people started to get up and get out of there.

"I'm not the one who's out of time." Steve said. The a S.H.I.E.L.D aircraft appeared overhead.

"Loki, drop the weapon and stand down." Agent Romanoff said. Guns were pointed at Loki. People were fleeing the scene. I put the earpiece back in my ear so I could figure out what to do.

"Get out of there." An agent said in my earpiece.

"Not yet." I said. I helped the man to his feet. "Go!" He did as I said and quickly fled the scene.

"Get out of there." The agent said again. I still didn't listen. I ran towards some of the other people pointing for them to go a certain way, a way that would avoid the wreckage. When I flipped back around Loki. He shot a blast of energy towards me. I jumped out of the way, hitting the ground with a thud.

"Shit." I said under my breath, trying to ignore the pain I felt. The bullet wound to my side still hurt a lot.

"Get out!" Phil yelled into my earpiece, clearly watching the scene on something. I got to my feet as fast as I could and Steve blocked the next energy blast Loki sent my way, knocking him down. Clearly Loki thought taking me down first would make things easier. I quickly moved to the edge of the scene, hiding behind a tree.

"Kneel!" Loki said, standing over Steve like he was about to use the scepter on him. If I had a weapon, I would have done something about it. Without one, I was only going to make things worse for myself. But Fury had confiscated my gun; and my taser, and my pepper spray. I didn't think that a pocket knife was going to work against a god with a pointy shooty thingy.

"Not today!" Steve said, flipping to his feet and knocking Loki down.

"The guy's all over the place." Agent Romanoff said.

"What do I do?" I asked.

"Stay put." She said.

"Are you guys going to do this every time?!" I asked.

"You're 11. We're not going to stick you in the middle of a fight." She said.

"That's basically what you guys did." I said. Then she stopped talking to me and the earpiece feed shut off. Suddenly Tony flew over in the Iron Man suit. He shot Loki back with his energy force.

"Make your move, Reindeer Games." Tony said, pointing his blasters at him. Loki slowly put up his hands and the suit dematerialized. "Good move." I walked over to them.

"Mr. Stark." Steve said.

"Captain." Tony said.

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**Like I said, Alex ****isn't**** going to be in as much of the action as I originally had her in. It was too much, and I seemed to forget myself that I made her an 11 year old.**

**Alex is going to be in The Battle of New York, but they let her do it very, VERY, reluctantly.**

**Please review.**


	28. Chapter 20: Return to the Helicarrier

**I'm starting to wonder if anybody actually reads this story. I really want reviews.**

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**Chapter 20: Return to the Helicarrier**

I wanted somebody just to haul up and smack Loki, but no, that's not protocol. I knew that it wasn't as bad as it could of been, but the way I landed when I hit the ground hurt like hell. I pretended that it didn't, knowing that I could wait and just ask for pain meds when I got back on the Helicarrier. I ended up sitting in one of the chairs away from Loki.

"I don't like it." Steve said quietly, not facing Loki.

"What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily?" Tony asked.

"I don't remember it being that easy. This guy packs a wallop." Steve said. Loki was just sitting there, tied up, listening to their conversation.

"Still, you were pretty spry, for an older fellow. What's your thing? Pilates?" Tony asked. I rolled my eyes, knowing that Steve would be confused.

"What?" Steve asked.

"It's like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle." Tony said.

"Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in." Steve said, sounding kind of pissed.

"Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you." Tony said. Steve turned to look at me.

"Neither did you." He said. I held up my hands.

"Hey, I didn't find out 'til after. I didn't know that you'd care." I said. He didn't have the chance to say anything. Thunder rolled and lightning struck and the jet shook.

"Where's this coming from?" Agent Romanoff asked, though it was mostly to herself. Everybody looked over at Loki who looked worried.

"What's the matter? Scared of a little lightning?" Steve asked.

"I'm not overly fond of what follows." Loki said.

"Oh, it can't be." I said. They turned to look at me, as I knew who Loki was referring to. Suddenly, something hit the top of the jet and it shook. The back of the jet started to open. He jumped down and walked into the cabin. Everybody looked at him in shock, not moving. He grabbed Loki and flew off.

"Now there's that guy." Tony said.

"Another Asgardian?" Agent Romanoff asked.

"Think the guy's a friendly?" Steve asked, yelling over the roar of the wind. I wanted to say something, to let him know that Thor wasn't going to kill us. But Tony spoke first.

"Doesn't matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost." Tony said. He turned, and got ready to jump off the jet.

"Stark we need a plan of attack!" Steve yelled.

"I have a plan. Attack." Tony said, before jumping out of the plane. Steve hurried to grab a parachute to follow.

"I'd sit this one out, Cap." Agent Romanoff said.

"I don't see how I can." He said, still putting on the parachute.

"These guys come from legends, they're basically Gods." She said, still trying to talk him out of it.

"Listen to her." I yelled over the noise. He paid no attention to me.

"There's only one God, ma'am. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that." Steve said. He turned and jumped out of the jet. I rolled my eyes.

"Is it possible to close that thing?" I yelled. Slowly, it closed. "Thank you." I turned to face Agent Romanoff. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Wait for them to come back."

"Really?!"

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**Please review, it should get better.**


	29. Chapter 21: What do we do

**This story is most likely going to be finished in 29 chapters. Chapters, not including the journal entries. (Which we've seen the last of in this story).**

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**Chapter 21: What do we do**

Fury stood in front of Loki's cell, watching him. It was like they were having a standoff. "In case it's unclear, you try to escape, you so much as scratch that glass." Fury said, pressing a button which opened up a huge hole underneath Loki's cell. "Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?" He pointed at Loki, "Ant." He pointed at the button, "Boot."

"It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me." He said with a laugh.

"Built for something a lot stronger than you." Fury said, not wanting to say what it was really built for.

"Oh, I've heard." Loki said. He looked dead into the camera, the one we were watching the feed from. "The mindless beast, makes play he's still a man." Dr. Banner looked down.

"How desperate are you? You call on these lost creatures to defend you." We were all watching him from different cameras.

"How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did." Fury said. Loki just seemed to use that as ammunition.

"Ooh. It burns you to come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power. And for what?" He asked, he turned to look at the camera, "A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is." Fury just rolled his…eye.

"Yeah, well, you let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something." He said, before walking off. They closed the screens.

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Dr. Banner asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Loki's gonna drag this out." Steve said. Then he turned to Thor, "So, Thor, what's his play?"

"He has an army called the Chitauri, that none of Asgard nor any world know. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. Return, I suspect, for the Tesseract." Thor said.

"An army, from outer space." Steve stated, clearly not believing it.

"This isn't the most farfetched thing that's happened." I said, "I mean, I watched him use the Tesseract to rip a portal through all the fabric of space, if he can do that, he can amass an army."

"So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for." Dr. Banner said.

"Selvig?" Thor asked.

"He's an astrophysicist." Dr. Banner said.

"He's a friend." Thor said, sounding shocked that Loki would take him.

"Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours." Agent Romanoff said.

"Every scientist working on that project that is not dead or under protection is being controlled by Loki." I said.

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here." Steve said.

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki." Dr. Banner said, everybody turned to him to see what his reasoning was, "That guy's brain is a bag of cats, you can smell crazy on him."

"Have care how you speak." Thor said, sounding offended, "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days." Agent Romanoff pointed out.

"He's adopted."

"Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?" Dr. Banner asked.

"It's a stabilizing agent." Tony said, before turning to say something quietly to Phil.

"Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D." I pointed out. He nodded. He walked past Thor, patting him on the arm as he did.

"No hard feelings Point Break, you've got a mean swing." He said. Thor just stared at him.

"Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants." Tony said. "Raise the monitors." He said. They just stared at him. He pointed to one of the agents using a computer, "That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did." He looked at the computer monitors and covered one eye.

"How does Fury even see these?" He asked.

"He turns." Agent Hill said.

"Sounds exhausting." Tony said, sounding like the spoiled rich guy he was. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube." Then he was back to crazy scientist guy.

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Agent Hill asked.

"Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" He asked. I raised my hand, so did Dr. Banner. "Well of course you two did."

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asked.

"He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier." Dr. Banner said.

"Unless?" I prompted, knowing that there had to be something else.

"Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect." Tony said.

"Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet." Dr. Banner said.

"Finally, people who speak English." He said.

"Is that what just happened?" Steve asked.

"Not exactly." I said, "This is Science Talk. I'd translate, but that would take about 4 days, a calculator, and every single one of Dr. Selvig's papers.

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. You're work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster." Tony said, shaking his hand.

"Thanks." Dr. Banner said flatly.

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube." Fury said. He gestured between Dr. Banner and myself, "I was hoping you might join them."

"Let's start with that stick of his. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a Hydra weapon." Steve said.

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys." Fury said.

"Monkeys? I do not understand." Thor said.

"I do!" Steve said, everybody turned to stare at him, "I understood that reference." He looked proud of himself. Tony rolled his eyes.

"Every human in the 21st century understood that reference." I said.

"Come on kid, we're going to the lab." Tony said, clapping me on the back.

"OW!"

"What the hell happened to you?" He asked.

'Loki. Scepter. Desk. Pain." I said, gritting my teeth, "No amount of pain meds can make this stop hurting." He helped me up and we started walking to the lab.

"I think you might need more pain meds." Dr. Banner said.

"You have no idea how many meds I have in my system right now just to keep me standing." I said seriously.

"It can't be that bad." Tony said.

"I'm not entirely sure I'd pass a steroid test right now." I said.

"Knowing the lengths S.H.I.E.L.D is willing to go to, I don't doubt that." Tony said.

"Yeah."

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**Please review. Ok, maybe I should stop leaving this here, because it makes me sound like an ****overexcited**** dog. Like Buster. Who ****keeps magically appearing and disappearing because I can't write him into certain scenes.**


	30. Chapter 22: Tensions Arise

**I've actually started writing Taken from Translation. That is going to be a lot longer than it was last time, and is going to have more Marvel characters in it. **

**This time it's going to include the same ones and add some more: Darcy Lewis, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Beth (The Waitress), Spiderman, Venom (My friend is making me write a story with her in the Venom suit, so it's going to be Andrew Garfield Spiderman with cartoon villains).**

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**Chapter 22: Tensions Arise**

I managed to find Buster and get him back. That meant he was hiding under a desk in the laboratory while S.H.I.E.L.D agents thought they lost him. I considered that a victory. At the moment, he was begging Tony for blueberries. And succeeding.

"Why is there a dog in here?" Tony asked, though he didn't look like he was complaining about it.

"My dog." I said, reaching forward to pat Buster's head.

"But why is he here?" Tony asked.

"Because when you scare the absolute shit out of an 11 year old by kicking down every door in her apartment and point a gun at her face while she's freaking out, you kind of have to bend some rules so she does what you say." I said, turning to face him.

"They're acting like a SWAT team." Tony said.

"I'm pretty sure it was the S.H.I.E.L.D equivalent." I said. Dr. Banner was ignoring our conversation and still working. For a few minutes Tony and I were going back and forth with ideas of what we should do.

"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process." Dr. Banner said. They were working on high-tech screens, and I was waiting for the chance to peek at what they were doing.

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops." Tony said.

"All I packed was a tooth brush." Dr. Banner said.

"You know, you should come by Stark Towers sometime. Top ten floors, all R and D. You'd love it, it's candy land." Tony said.

"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke…Harlem." Dr. Banner said. I looked down at my phone, getting at least the 30th text from my cousin. He kept sending me pictures of the area around his house.

"Well, that explains why my cousin just sent me 30 pictures of rubble near his house saying 'They haven't cleaned it up yet'." I said, showing my phone to them.

"Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises." He said, slowly moving behind Dr. Banner. Suddenly he poked him with an electrical shock device.

"Ow!" Dr. Banner said. Tony looked at him closely.

"Nothing?" He asked. For some reason, I thought that was hilarious. Just that moment, Steve walked in.

"Hey! Are you nuts?" He asked Tony. Tony ignored him and went about eating his bag of blueberries and talking to Dr. Banner.

"You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?" Tony asked. I had to force myself not to laugh.

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asked.

"Funny things are." Tony said.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny." Steve said. Then he turned to Dr. Banner, "No offense, doctor."

"No, it..it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things." Dr. Banner said.

"You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut." Tony said.

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark." Steve said accusingly.

"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us. I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables." Tony said.

"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve asked.

"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." Tony said. I couldn't help but nod along to that statement. We had no idea what Fury was hiding from us.

"It's bugging him too, isn't it?" Tony said, pointing at Dr. Banner.

"Uh...I just wanna finish my work here and…" He said, sounding nervous. We all picked up on that.

"Doctor?" Steve prompted.

"'A warm light for all mankind to share', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube." Dr. Banner said.

"I heard it." Steve said.

"We all did." I added. Dr. Banner pointed at Tony.

"Well, I think that was meant for you. Even if Barton didn't tell him, that's all over the news." Dr. Banner said.

"The Stark Tower? That big ugly…" Tony glared at him, "Building in New York?" Steve finished.

"It's powered by Ark Reactors, self sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?" Dr. Banner asked.

"That's just the prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now." Tony said. Dr. Banner gestured towards him.

"So why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, What are they doing in the energy business in the first place? Another thing, why did they bring her in on the Tesseract Project?" He asked, gesturing to me.

"I'm not even supposed to be in this universe." I said.

"That's not an excuse for putting a kid near a harmful device they knew nothing about. Think about it. Fury's been putting you on the frontline. He had you working on the Tesseract Project. He had you working with me. He put you on the ground in Stuttgart. Why?" He asked.

"I—" I started, trying to answer him. He grimaced, as I proved his point. Suddenly things were becoming clear, why Fury was really asking me for my help. He was keeping me out of the way. He was stalling me. They didn't _need _my help, he was _using _me for one reason or another. "Mother of god." I muttered under my breath.

"I should probably look into all that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files." Tony said.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" Steve asked.

"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide." Tony said. "Blueberry?" He said, offering the bag to Steve.

"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?" Steve asked.

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically not possible." Tony pointed out.

"He's got a point." I said. They turned to look at me.

"Elaborate." Steve said.

"Fury had some crazy stuff going on back there. Phase 2, secret projects, stuff I shouldn't have overheard; I can understand that he was hiding some of this stuff from me, but hiding it from everyone else. That doesn't seem right." I said.

"What's Phase 2?" Dr. Banner asked.

"I don't even know." I said, "But on top of all that, he had me help build a prototype device. I think it was supposed to do some test on the Tesseract."

"I think Loki's trying to wind us up." Steve said, basically ignoring what I had just said, "This is a man who means to start a war, and if don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them." Steve said.

"Following is not really my style." Tony said.

"And you're all about style, aren't you?" Steve said. Everything he said to Tony had this accusing tone.

"Of the people in this room, which one is; a) wearing a spangly outfit, and b) not of use?" Tony asked.

"Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Dr. Banner asked, trying to get it through his head. Something wasn't right.

"Just find the cube." Steve said angrily, before walking out of the lab. After standing there for a second, we went back to work.

"That's the guy my dad never shut up about?" Tony asked, "Wonder if they should've have kept him on ice."

"The guy's not wrong about Loki, he does have the jump on us." Dr. Banner said.

"What he's got is an ACME dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in his face, and I'm gonna be there when it does." Tony said. I was searching like crazy for my backpack, realizing that Dr. Banner was probably right.

"And I'll read all about it." Dr. Banner said. Then I saw it under Tony's desk.

"Hand me that." I said. Tony lifted the bag and gave it to me.

"Uh-huh. Or you'll be suiting up like the rest of us." Tony said.

"Ah, see. I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare." He said grimly.

"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart." Tony said, pointing to the Ark Reactor, "This stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a terrible privilege." I thought back to Iron Man 2, where it was killing him.

"But you can control it." Dr. Banner said.

"Because I learned how." Tony said.

"It's different." Dr. Banner said. I dug through my bag trying to find it. When it wasn't in the pocket I knew I left it in, I searched all of the others. I couldn't find it.

"Hey, I've read all about your accident. That much Gamma exposure should have killed you." He said.

"So you're saying that the Hulk—the other guy—saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Save it for what?" Dr. Banner asked.

"I guess we'll find out." Tony said.

"You may not enjoy that." Dr. Banner said.

"You just might." As soon as they went back to work, I quietly slipped out of the room. I had to find Phil, I knew that he'd help me.

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**Please review. I have up to Chapter 27 done. I'll be done within a month or so, probably less.**


	31. Chapter 23: He's playing us

**Please review. My life has sucked for the past year and for some reason this gives me hope.**

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**Chapter 23: He's playing us**

I went straight to the bridge, where I was almost certain somebody would be. When I got there, I found Phil and Thor talking about Jane Foster.

"As soon as Loki took the doctor we moved Jane Foster. We've got an excellent observatory in Traunsee. She was asked to consult there very suddenly yesterday. Handsome fee, private plane, very remote. She'll be safe." He said.

"Thank you. It's no accident Loki taking Erik Selvig. I dread what he plans for him once he's done. Erik is a good man." Thor said.

"He talks about you a lot. You changed his life. You changed everything around here." Phil said.

"Some for the better, some for the worse." I said, walking towards them.

"They were better as they were. We pretend on Asgard that we're more advanced, but we...we come here battling like Bilchsteim."

"Like what?" Phil asked.

"Bilchsteim. You know; huge, scaly, big antlers. You don't have those?" Thor asked.

"Don't think so." Phil said.

"They are repulsive, and they trample everything in their path." Thor said.

"I'm kind of glad we don't have those, though it would be cool." I said. Phil just stared at me with the 'Bad Timing' stare. "Well, it would." I argued. Thor seemed far away, like he didn't even see or hear us.

"When I first came to earth, Loki's rage followed me here and your people paid the price. And now again." He said, he looked out the window, "In my youth I courted war."

"War hasn't started yet." Fury said, walking up behind us, "You think you can make Loki tell us what the Tesseract is?" He asked.

"I do not know. Loki's mind is far afield, it's not just power he craves, it's vengeance—upon me. There's no pain that would prize his need." Thor said.

"A lot of guys think that, until the pain starts." Fury said, getting on level with Thor.

"What are you asking me to do?" Thor asked.

"I'm asking, what are you prepared to do?" Fury said. The more we thought about it, the more we said, the more sense it made.

"Loki is a prisoner."

"Then why do I feel like he's the only person on this boat that wants to be here?"

"He's playing us." I said quietly, finally realizing what Loki's game was.

"That's what I'm afraid of." Fury said. Thor stood up and left. Everybody was doing that lately. But he only went to the table, he didn't disappear like Steve did.

"But why us, why this planet?" I asked, "What's so important about Earth. There are planets out there, and they have to have more intelligence and better technology." I said.

"I think that's why." Fury said, "He's starting small. On us. He's trying to work his way up."

"The bag of cats is smarter than we thought." I said. Fury left to go do something else. I felt glad, that meant I could figure out what the hell he had done with my journal.

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**Like I said, please review.**


	32. Chapter 24: The Truth

**Ok, so I'm in the middle of working on Chapter 28: The Battle of New York, and I've noticed that the chapter is most likely going to be 9-10 pages in length. Would you guys like it if I divided that into two chapters, because there is a spot where I could, or would you guys just like it to be one chapter.**

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**Chapter 24: The Truth**

As soon as Fury walked away, I turned heel so I could interrogate Phil about my journal.

"Was it you?" I asked.

"What?" He asked.

"Was it you that stole my journal?" I asked.

"Why would I steal your journal?" He asked, confused.

"Didn't think you did. Just needed to start with that." I said, glad that I was right on the assumption that he was the good guy.

"Somebody stole your journal?" He asked.

"I think Fury stole my journal." I said.

"Why would Fury steal your journal?" He asked. I sighed.

"Because I'm a stupid person." I said, not wanting to actually explain myself. The look on his face, the WTF is wrong with this girl look, told me that I was going to have to spell it out for him.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"The last couples pages of my journal is a directory. I used it to write down every single bit of contact information and address I know my family uses." I said, hoping that he'd understand my concern.

"And you think Fury's going to break his word and use it to track down your family." Phil stated, finally getting my point.

"Exactly." I said, "And I just want the truth. Do you know anything about this? About him using me for this? About him stealing my journal?" I asked. I was hoping that the answer was no, but I just needed the answer.

"No, I didn't know." He said.

"Honestly?" I asked.

"I really didn't know." He said again.

I wasn't sure if I could trust him, but he seemed like a better option than Fury. Steve was being a pain in the ass. I didn't want to trust anyone that worked for S.H.I.E.L.D, except for Phil because at least he tried to get to know me. Thor was just weird. Tony was a cocky pain in the ass but he had a good point. Dr. Banner didn't really want to talk to anybody. So Phil was the better option. Plus he let me call him Phil, so that helped out.

"If you find anything out about it, let me know." I said.

"I will, just tell me if you find it." He said.

"Deal, I've got to get back to the lab. I don't even think they know I left." I said, before walking off.

When I got back, they didn't even act like I had been missing. The only one that looked at me was Buster. Dr. Banner and Tony were just talking about the Tesseract. I had been there for what they were talking about, so I wasn't doing anything.

"What are you doing, Mr. Stark?" Fury asked when he walked in.

"Uh...kind of been wondering the same thing about you, Nick." Tony said. I turned to face them.

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract." Fury said, sounding pissed.

"We are, the model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile." Dr. Banner said. He turned to look at me, "We might have used some of your ideas without telling you." I nodded, not really caring.

"And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss." He said, sitting on the counter. The screen finally popped up that had every secret of S.H.I.E.L.D that Nick Fury was currently hiding, "What is Phase 2?" Tony asked. I heard a loud noise, of something dropping on a table. It was a large weapon, one that looked all too familiar.

"Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons." Steve said. He turned to Tony, "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow for me." He threw something towards me and I caught it. "You might want this back." It was my journal.

"You did have my journal!" I said, but he ignored me.

"Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're…" Fury started. I was still confused.

"I'm sorry, Nick." Tony said, turning the screen towards Fury. It showed all the plans for the weapon. The weapons he tricked me into helping with, thinking it was something to test the Tesseract with. "What were you lying?"

"I was wrong, Director. The world hasn't changed a bit." Steve said. I looked between Fury and the screen.

"You had me help." I muttered under my breath, not loud enough for them to pick up on what I said. Fury knew what I meant.

"Alexandra, we—" He started.

"YOU HAD ME HELP!" I snapped, "You tricked me into helping you build a weapon." I The three of them turned to face Fury.

"You've got to be kidding me." Tony said.

"Stark—" Fury started.

"Don't Nick, no more lies." He responded.

"Then you flat out stole my journal." I said.

"Alexandra it was necessary—"" He started.

"It was necessary to steal an 11 year old's journal?" Dr. Banner asked. Moving in front of the desk and crossing his arms. I flipped through the journal, until I saw that the last page was ripped out. I showed that to Tony and he took the journal. Everything else was intact. He held the journal up so the others could see what they had done. Then he turned back to me.

"What was on that page?" Steve asked.

"Everything that's going to screw me over." I said. I turned to look at Fury. "Now what did you do with it?" I asked.

"Alexandra it was necessary that we took that from you." He lied.

"No, no it wasn't." I said, "But you had to do it. You just had to take it. You couldn't live up to the promise." I turned back to the others, "The only reason I agreed to stay during the Tesseract Project was because he promised me that he wasn't going to go after my family. I knew if they found out I was here, and that Fury did something to them, I would die."

"So he blackmailed you." Steve said.

"Not really, I was under the impression if I did what he said, and didn't do anything to threaten the project, that he wouldn't do anything about it. I guess I was wrong." I said. I turned to face Fury, "It seems my Dad was right, sir. You can't trust people." At that point, we all started talking over each other. We were yelling loudly when Thor and Agent Romanoff walked in. Dr. Banner pointed towards the screen.

"Did you know about this?" Dr. Banner asked.

"You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" Agent Romanoff asked.

"I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed." Dr. Banner said.

"Loki's manipulating you." Agent Romanoff said quickly.

"And you've been doing what exactly?" Dr. Banner asked, with good reason.

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you." Agent Romanoff said.

"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy." He pointed at the screen. "I'd like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."

"Because of him." Fury said, pointing at Thor.

"Me?" Thor asked.

"Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge mass that leveled a small town." He said, putting emphasis on leveled, "We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, out gunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet." Thor protested.

"Bullshit." I said loudly. I was surprised when they actually heard me.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled." He said.

"Like you controlled the cube?" Steve asked.

"You're work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war." Thor said.

"A higher form?" Steve asked.

"You forced our hand. We had to come up with something." Fury said.

"A nuclear deterrent, cause that always calms everything right down." Tony commented.

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" Fury shot back.

"I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep…" Steve said.

"Wait! Wait! Hold on! How is this now about me?" Tony said, cutting him off.

"I'm sorry, isn't everything?" Steve said.

"I thought humans were more evolved than this." Thor scoffed. I rolled my eyes.

"Fuck off." I said, but with the yelling, nobody heard me.

"Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?" Fury snapped. The arguing got louder and louder and we were yelling over each other. I don't think anybody knew what the others were saying. I could make nothing out.

"You speak of control, yet you court chaos." Thor said, finally getting everybody's attention.

"It's his M.O., isn't it? I mean, what are we, a team? No, no, no. We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're...we're a time-bomb." Dr. Banner said.

"You need to step away." Fury said, insistent that he get out of there.

"We all need to step away." I pointed out. They ignored me. That was the bad thing about being a kid in a group full of adults, they didn't have to pay attention to you.

"Why shouldn't they guy let off a little steam?" Tony asked, his hand on Steve's shoulder. Steve swatted his hand away.

"You know damn well why! Back off!" Steve snapped.

"Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me." Tony said.

"Yeah, big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?" Steve asked. Those two were close to a death match, and it was making me feel paranoid.

"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." Tony said, and he had a point. He was all of those, but he was being an ass about it.

"I know guys with none of that worth ten of you." Steve said, looking like he would murder Tony, "I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

"I think I would just cut the wire." Tony said, still being an ass.

"Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero." Steve said.

"A hero, like you?" Tony asked, "You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."

We were still arguing like crazy, but I didn't speak. I was still pissed, and I knew I wasn't going to get a say. Those two things were never good, and I wasn't about to get myself deeper just because I screwed myself over.

"Put on the suit, let's go a few rounds." Steve said, seriously. Thor laughed.

"You people are so petty," Thor said, "And tiny."

"Yeah, this is a tea…" Dr. Banner started, and he had a good point.

"Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his…" Fury started, only to be cut off.

"Where? You're renting my room." Dr. Banner pointed out. I slowly started moving away, nervous that something ad would happen.

"The cell was just…" Fury started.

"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know, I tried." He said. That startled everybody into looking at him. He sighed, "I got low, I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out. So I moved on, I focused on helping other people. I was good. Then you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk." He said. His calmness was fading fast and I was moving to get farther out of the way. "You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?" Dr. Banner asked. He looked like an absolute maniac.

Everybody was looking at him warily. He was freaking all of us out. Without his own knowledge, he had grabbed the scepter; as if subconsciously. Fury unhooked his gun and so did Agent Romanoff. Everybody kind of froze in place. Even Buster looked a little unnerved.

"Dr. Banner," Steve said, trying to keep the calm, "Put down the scepter."

Dr. Banner looked down at the scepter, confused. He didn't even seem to know that he had grabbed it. Then the computer started beeping, showing that it had found the Tesseract. Even thought that was a big accomplishment, we all still had that feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong. The tension was too high.

"Sorry, kids. You don't get to see my party trick after all." Dr. Banner said, putting down the scepter and walking over to the computer.

"Located the Tesseract?" Thor asked.

"I can get there faster." Tony said quickly.

"Look, all of us…" Steve said, trying to be the leader.

"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard, no human is a match for it." Thor objected. Tony turned to leave, but Steve stopped him.

"You're not going alone!" Steve snapped.

"You gonna stop me?" Tony asked.

"Put on the suit, let's find out." Steve said.

"I'm not afraid to hit an old man." Tony said, only making Steve angrier.

"Put on the suit." Steve demanded. The tension was too thick, we knew something was about to go wrong. Whether with Dr. Banner's results, or with something else.

"Go find Agent Coulson." Fury said to me, the paranoia getting to him. I grabbed my bag and Buster's leash, but I didn't leave the lab. I just had to find out where the Tesseract was.

"Oh my god." Dr. Banner said quietly. Everybody turned to look at him. Then it exploded. There was a giant hole in the center of the room and everybody went flying in different directions. I was thrown with Steve and Tony, once again, I had a 90 pound German Shepherd land on top of me. Agent Romanoff and Dr. Banner were thrown in another direction. Thor and Agent Fury were somewhere else.

"Put on the suit." Steve demanded, this time with good reason.

"Yep!" Tony said. Steve yanked the both of us up, and we were out of the lab and running down the hall. We were all heading in the same general direction, which would have to cut by the control room.

"Where do I go?" I asked quickly.

"Go find Agent Coulson." He said.

"Figured." I said, running like hell for the control room.

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**Please review. Like I said before, for some reason these reviews give me hope. Plus I want people to like what I do. I want to be a writer and I can't do that without positive/negative feedback.**


	33. Chapter 25: Thank you

**I kind of made this chapter for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D purposes, as to why I want to have her in it. I think writing her with those characters will be fun.**

**Plus, I needed this scene so I could make a sensible reason other than he was being stupid/didn't have the time, as to why he ****didn't**** have a bulletproof vest or something.**

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**Chapter 25: Thank you**

I ran for the control center, as fast as I could. It didn't help that I had a dog that wanted to go in the opposite direction. Once we got close to the control center, I narrowly avoided getting shot. I dodged several bullets and ended up kicking a guy in the balls and running into the control center.

To enter the room, you had to go around a corner, and that wasn't exactly a good thing. As soon as I stepped into the room, basically every single S.H.I.E.L.D agent in the room started pointing their guns at me. I held up my hands, trying to let them know I was on their side. The Agents in the Helicarrier, were also in S.H.I.E.L.D uniforms with S.H.I.E.L.D issued weapons. It was easy to understand that they didn't know who was on which side, thanks to Loki.

Once they realized who I was, and that I was as confused and scared as the rest of them, the guns dropped, or at least dropped so they weren't about to shoot me with them. Phil rapidly motioned for me to come over to him. He was crouched by a computer, which, thanks to the fact that the other half of the room was a 2 feet higher, was somewhat hidden. He had on a bulletproof vest, which a lot of the Agents had on.

"Oh thank god. You're ok." He said, sounding relieved. He nearly tackled me in a hug. I was a little confused, but it was clear that the explosion shook everybody up a little bit.

"What happened?" I asked, still being squished against him. "Phil, you're hugging me."

"Sorry." He said, letting go. He didn't answer my first question so I repeated it.

"What happened?" I asked again. He dug around in his jacket pocket.

"We've been attacked." He said, not looking at me.

"Yeah, no shit. By who?" I asked.

"Agent Barton and the other agents that Loki took." Phil said. I felt stupid for asking that question, it was obvious.

"Oh." I said flatly. It was a no brainer, who else would have attacked us. Loki's team.

Phil was trying to get something out of his pocket, something that was bigger than his pocket. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and pressed something in my hand. I looked down, to see the gun that belonged to my Father. S.H.I.E.L.D had confiscated it from me, and not given it back.

"What are you…" I started, but I faltered. I didn't know what I was trying to say anymore.

"Director Fury told me not to give this back you." He said, "But now, you need it."

"But you could get in trouble." I said, "What about the prot—" He cut me off before I could finish my sentence.

"Alex, now's not the time for this—screw protocols. We're at war." He said, "I need you to have this gun. I need you to protect yourself." He sounded so concerned for me. It took me a minute to realize that he had gotten attached to me. He was willing to risk his job if it meant that I was safe.

"I—I don't even know if I can use this right." I said, a little flustered that I was being handed a gun. I hadn't planned on really using the gun, it was more for me feeling safe. I'd never fired a gun before, and I had hoped that I could bluff my way through it.

"There are millions of things I can teach you. Millions of ways to use this gun. And I will teach you how to do every single one of them. But right now you'll only need one. The simplest one; point, shoot, hope you hit something important. If they get up, shoot again. If they have a gun, take their gun." He said. I nodded.

"Is it really going to—" I started, but then there was gunshots over our heads.

"Shit." He said, as it hit the desks behind us, barely missing us. He wasted no time ripping the vest off, and shoving it over my head.

"What are you doing?" I asked, startled. He was trying to keep me safe, and it terrified me. I was so scared that he was going to get himself killed trying to protect me. He fumbled with the straps, making sure it was on me correctly.

"Protecting you." He said, then he moved closer to the direction the bullets were coming from. I was shocked that Phil would risk his life and give me his bulletproof vest. it was kevlar, that would protect me.

My own family wouldn't—hell, my own Father wouldn't do that for me. It was basically, all for yourself, if you had the last name Harbor. It took me a while to understand his actions. I don't think he'd ever been in a situation like that before. He had to protect me, not just himself. He was risking his life for a kid he hadn't even known for a 3 weeks. I don't even think he knew how much that meant to me.

I sat there, unsure of what I should do for a few minutes. There were gunshots everywhere. Even if they couldn't see me, I was still wide open. Anything above or below my chest was at risk of getting a bullet wound. He glanced back at me for a second, to make sure that I was still ok after several bullets hit the desk behind us. He turned back to shoot, but quickly turned back to face me after seeing me hugging my legs. Every time he looked at me, he seemed to be concerned for me.

"What do I do?" I asked, absolutely terrified.

"Do you have your com?" He asked. I nodded. "Then ask Captain Rogers or Mr. Stark whether they need your help. Try Agent Romanoff or Dr. Banner to see if they're ok." He said. I nodded and pressed the com.

"Captain Rogers, do you copy?" I asked.

"Yeah." He said.

"Do you guys need help?" I asked.

"Uh…yeah." Steve said.

"How fast can you get here?" Tony asked, butting in.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"In the rotor." Tony said.

"Which one?" I asked, already moving to get up. Buster moved to follow me. "Stay." I said to Buster. He whimpered, but I quickly tied his leash around one of the desks. At the moment I left, there was no reason to be worried, but I was on guard.

"The one by the lab." Steve said. That was all the information I needed to find out where they were.

"On my way." I said, about to climb out of the control center.

"Be safe." He said. I nodded.

"You too." I said. I turned to leave the room, but I stopped and looked back at him. "And Phil." I said, he turned to look at me, "Thank you." I meant that for maybe the first time in my life. He gave me a brief nod and a smile. Then I left the control room, heading out into the most dangerous place on the planet at the moment.

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	34. Chapter 26: The Helicarrier Battle

**I'm trying to make Alex as realistic as I can. But I don't know how I'm supposed to do that properly, so she might not be at her best in chapters like this one. **

**I don't know, because ****nobody**** will review and tell me.**

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**Chapter 26: The Helicarrier Battle**

I ran as fast as I could, nearly getting shot several times. I was narrowly missed many times, and I was surprised I hadn't had a panic attack yet. Most of that stemmed from the fact that I didn't know how many bullets I had in my gun, and that freaked me out a lot. A LOT.

Because of that, I didn't shoot the gun. I ducked and dodged bullets, not taking the time to stop and shoot. I couldn't stop, I was fairly certain as soon as I did, I'd be dead. They had no qualms about killing a little girl. Steve hadn't been there long when I got there. Tony was right beside the rotor, in the suit, trying to figure out what he'd have to do.

"Stark, she's here." Steve said into the com, over the noise.

"Good. See what we got." He said. He stared at the rotor, which had been completely destroyed. "I gotta get this super conducting cooling system back online before I can access the rotors and work on dislodging the debris."

"Can you do that?" I asked.

"Maybe," He said, "I need you to get to that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position." Steve grabbed the control panel before I could and opened it up. "What's it look like in there?" Tony asked. Steve was staring at it like a monkey doing a math problem.

"It seems to run on some form of electricity." Steve said. That led to a mental face-palm. I could practically hear my friend Katie in my ear.

"Imbecullin!" She'd yell that whenever somebody, including herself, did something stupid. She told me she got it off some comedian she liked. She might have told me his name, but sometimes she talked so fast that nobody—not even her parents, could keep up with her. I think I confused Steve by the smile on my face, especially giving the situation. Imbecullin was a word that we commonly used, despite the fact that it wasn't a real word and confused a lot of people, sometimes even ourselves, when we said it.

"Well, you're not wrong." Tony said. "Alex, take the control panel from him." We started messing around with the relays, making sure they were in the right position.

"The relays are intact. What's our next move?" Steve said.

"Even if I clear the rotors, this thing won't re-engage without a jump. I'm gonna have to get in there and push." Tony said.

"Well if that thing gets up to speed, you'll get shredded!" Steve pointed out.

"Then stay in the control unit and reverse polarity long enough to disengage mag…" Tony started, but Steve cut him off.

"Speak English!" He yelled. Tony sighed.

"See that red lever?" He asked. Both Steve and I turned towards it. "It'll slow the rotors down long enough for me to get out. Stand by it, wait for my word." Steve jumped up on the platforms, towards the lever.

"What do I do?" I asked, yelling over the noise and the roar of the wind.

"Stay." Steve said. I huffed and crossed my arms. Phil trusted me enough to give me a gun, and his bulletproof vest. They wouldn't even let me pull a stupid lever.

"Steve, I need to do something." I said, feeling like something was about to go wrong.

"Just wait!" He yelled.

"Wait for what?" I asked.

"Wait until we need you." He said. I thought that meant fighting, but I knew they wouldn't want me to fight.

Soon enough, some of Loki's soldiers came in. Before I could react, 4 bullets hit me in the chest. It caught me off guard and I stumbled. I regained my balance and ducked behind some metal, which was basically all it was. Every time somebody walked past, trying to shoot us, I shot. At some point, I got up and grabbed one of their guns, tucking the now empty handgun in the front of the the the vest, as I had no better place to put it.

"Cap, need a lever." Tony said, still pushing the engine. Steve had been thrown off by some of Loki's soldiers, holding onto a wire. There was nothing I could do, no way I could get to him, so I was too busy trying to shoot Loki's soldiers.

"I need a minute here!" Steve yelled.

"Lever! Now!" Tony yelled.

Steve started dragging himself back onto the ship but more of Loki's soldiers started to shoot at him. I started shooting at them, trying to keep them off of him long enough for him to get up there and get the lever. I got backhanded with the back of one of those guns. Either they didn't know what else to do, or they ran out of bullets. I went stumbling back and skidded towards the edge. I grabbed onto the grate and threw the gun onto the platform. I tried to pull myself up, with no avail. I started having an internal panic moment. I was about to fall out of a giant flying aircraft carrier.

"Captain." I said, straining to get my leg onto the grate. He didn't hear me, he was too busy trying to get to the lever. "STEVE!" I yelled.

He quickly flipped in my direction. He pulled the lever just as Tony got ripped from the engine by the force. He ran back, and grabbed my hand and hoisted me back onto the platform. They were still shooting at us. I picked the gun up off the floor and shot at them. Tony tried to get the suit to work, but it was barely working. He flew it into the building, taking out the last one of Loki's soldiers. I felt a wave of relief, but I still couldn't shake the fact that something was wrong.

"Agent Coulson is down." Fury said into the com. We all froze. "A medical team is on its way to your location." Another agent said over the com. We waited for a while, waiting to see if Fury said anything else. "They're here. They called it."

Suddenly, it all seemed real.

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**Yeah, yeah. Not a good ending. I know. **

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	35. Chapter 27: Dead in the air

**Well, almost at the battle chapter. Keep in mind, that one probably won't be posted today like chapters 21-27 have. I've been working on Chapter 28 for awhile. It's going to be very long. I'm having a little trouble figuring out what to do in some parts, but I'm very close to the end.**

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**Chapter 27: Dead in the air**

Tony had to get help getting out of the suit, and Steve and I were given the medical care we needed, which was minor, thankfully. We got changed as well as we could, which for me was just the first thing I could find out of my bag. They had to lead me back to the conference room, since I wasn't seeing straight anymore. I couldn't do anything without almost running into a wall.

Phil had been the person that took care of me while I was at S.H.I.E.L.D. He was the person that I trusted. He was the only S.H.I.E.L.D agent I knew I could trust. He had made an effort to get to know me, he had tried to make sure I was comfortable. On top of that, I was feeling guilt they didn't know. He had given me his bulletproof vest. He was the only reason I was alive, and I was part of the reason he was dead.

We gathered in the conference room, sitting around the table we had all been at earlier. That morning, seemed so far away; everything had happened so quickly, and it was hard to believe that it had all happened in one day. Steve, Tony, and I were the only ones there. Agent Romanoff was still there and Agent Barton had been captured, but we were the only ones that were there to talk to Fury.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket. Fury said, shuffling the Captain America trading cards, which were now covered in blood. I thought that was strange, as I was fairly certain I had watched him put them in his locker, but I wasn't thinking straight and I couldn't see straight. "Guess he never did get you to sign them." He said, looking up and throwing the cards on the table. They scattered around. Steve stared down at them.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you." Fury said, leaning against the table. "Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming." He added sadly.

"I—Ah." I started to try and say something, but I faltered. At that point I had a box of tissues and had my hand wound tightly in Buster's fur. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. They briefly looked at me, but turned back to face Fury. Other than that, the only response he received was a few sighs and sad looks.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier." Fury added, then he looked over at Tony, "There was an idea, Stark knows this, called The Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could." He said. Tony looked angry, because he had been told that it had nothing to do with The Avengers Initiative. "Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes." Fury said. Tony stood up and angrily walked off. Steve and I still sat there, Steve messing with the trading cards. "Well, it's an old fashioned notion."

We sat there for a while, but eventually we got up and left the room. Fury had left before we did. We walked towards the detention level, where the cage had been, where Phil had died. We had gone after Tony.

"Was he married?" Steve asked, walking towards Tony.

"No. He was with a uh...cellist, I think." Tony said. He looked at me for confirmation.

"Yeah." I said, "He said her name's Audrey." I don't know why, but I found that a little ironic. The person he was in love with's name was Audrey. The person I wanted to bury in a shallow grave's name was Aubrey.

"I'm sorry. He seemed like a good man." Steve said. That comment looked like it was directed at both me and Tony.

"He was an idiot." Tony said. Both Steve and I were shocked. Even though he was Tony Stark, I couldn't believe that he would say that.

"Why? For believing?" Steve asked harshly.

"For taking on Loki alone." Tony responded.

"He was doing his job." I cut in, before Steve could say it. I was pissed. He _was_ a good man. He died doing a _brave_ thing. Not a stupid thing. He knew that there was a good chance he would die. That was part of the job description.

"He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have…" Tony said, but he faltered.

"Sometimes there isn't a way out." Steve said.

"Right. How did that work for him?" Tony said, turning to look at the metal wall which was now stained with blood.

"Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?" Steve asked, which was the wrong thing to say.

"We are not soldiers!" Tony snapped. He took a second to calm himself down, "I'm not marching to Fury's fife."

"Neither am I." Steve said, trying to calm us all down, "He's got the same blood on his hands that Loki does—"

"And what about you?" Tony asked, looking at me.

"Me? What does this have to do with me?" I asked.

"Fury flat out lied to you. For all we know he's planning on killing your family. Why are you ready to fight for S.H.I.E.L.D?" He asked.

"It's not about Fury and it's not about S.H.I.E.L.D." I said. His angry look turned sad once he realized what I meant.

"This is for Coulson, isn't it?" He asked. I nodded.

"This is about Phil. It's partly my fault he's dead—he gave me the vest—and I want to make Loki pay." I said.

Steve looked a little sad, but didn't say anything about the conversation between me and Tony. He just continued right where he had left off, "But right now we gotta put that behind us and get this done. Now Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list—"

"He made it personal." Tony cut in.

"Very personal." I added quietly.

"That's not the point." Steve said. He was getting tired of getting interrupted.

"That is the point. That's Loki's point." He said, finally understanding what was happening. Slowly it started to dawn on us, "He hit us all right where we live. Why?"

"To tear us apart." Steve asked. We all knew that answer, but we needed to hear it.

"We all felt something different when it happened." I said, "He was trying to disable us." They turned to look at me. "Think about it. Guilt." I gestured to myself, "Helplessness." I gestured between the three of us, "Anger." I gestured between the three of us.

"He had to conquer his greed, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants." He said, piecing everything together. "He wants to beat us, he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience."

"Right. I caught his act in Stuttgart." Steve said. That was exactly what Loki had done. He let us find him, he called us out.

"Yeah. That's just previews, this is...this is opening night. And Loki, he's a full-tail diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered—" He cut off, realizing what he was saying. Steve and I stared at him, waiting for him to finish piecing it together. "Sonofabitch." He said quickly, running the words together before running off.

"Suit up." I said to Steve, before running back to get to my stuff.

I ran back to the room where I had my bag. Luckily, that wing of the Helicarrier was still intact. I decided that it would be a good to up my appearance to something a little more, action ready. Combat boots, jeans, long sleeve shirt, S.H.I.E.L.D jacket, bulletproof vest, handgun which I once again tucked in the front of the bulletproof vest, gun I stole from one of Loki's soldier. I debated what to do with Buster, I wanted him to be safe, but I didn't want to leave him, or anything at S.H.I.E.L.D.

What I did, probably wasn't smart. I stole some bullets, to put in both the handgun and the gun I stole. Then, I went to where they were keeping Phil's stuff. I stole the key to his locker. I had planned on shoving my bag inside, so it was safe from Fury until I could get back to it.

Inside his locker, was a picture of a woman, I guessed was the cellist. Other than that, it was empty. I could tell that the key had been in his pocket, because the lanyard it was on was splattered with blood. Fury had used the key to get the trading cards. I put my bag inside his locker, feeling bad that I was using his locker to hide my stuff. Phil himself had told me, 'Screw Protocol', so I used that to make me feel a little bit better about it.

I dropped Buster off in the main control room, wrapping his leash around a chair before taking off to find Steve. I met back up with Steve near the medical ward. That was where Agent Romanoff was. We asked where she was, they told us without issue. I think that was because they found Steve intimidating.

"Time to go." Steve said, poking his head in the door.

"Go where?" Agent Romanoff asked. She was on the bed, just sitting there, waiting for something to happen.

"I'll tell you on the way." He said, I popped my head in.

"Is she coming?" Agent Romanoff asked, pointing at me. Steve briefly glanced back at me.

"No." Steve said.

"Yes." I said. Steve sighed.

"Can you fly one of those jets?" He asked.

"I can." Agent Barton said, walking out from the bathroom. We turned to look at Agent Romanoff. She nodded.

"You got a suit?" Steve asked.

"Yeah." Agent Barton said.

"Then suit up." Steve said, and the two of us left the room. He basically dragged me

"Where exactly are we going?" I asked as we walked down the hallway. He turned back to face me.

"You shouldn't be coming." He said.

"Well I am." I said, not about to argue with him or take no for an answer "Where are we going?" I asked again, expecting an answer.

"Stark Tower. We're making that bastard pay." Steve said. I was a little shocked. He was Captain America after all.

"How?" I asked.

"I don't know." He said.

"Well that's reassuring." I quipped as we waited for Agent Barton and Agent Romanoff to return. "Steve—Can I call you Steve?" I asked. He nodded. "We don't have resources, we don't have a plan, we don't have a team, and we don't have anyone backing us. Is there anything we really can do?"

"We can fight them off. For as long as we can." He said.

"We don't know how long that'll be." I said, "We've got nothing going for us. If anything, the odds are against us."

"Alex," He said with a sigh, "We've got to have hope."

"How?" I asked, "I wasn't—I—It didn't even seem real until—" The tears were coming back, and I was regretting saying that I would go with them.

"Alex, we need to do this, we need to be there, or nobody else will be." Steve said with a sigh, "Do you really want to come with us?" Even though I was starting to regret my decision, I nodded. Within a few minutes we were heading down the hanger and heading towards the plane. Nobody stopped us. It didn't even seem like they noticed us.

"You shouldn't be going." Steve said again.

"Well I am." I said, repeating myself as well. "Just cut the crap and let me go." He didn't say anything else on the matter. There was only one jet even remotely prepared for flight. The agent checking it over looked up from his clipboard, confused.

"You guys aren't authorized to be in here." He said. He stopped talking when Steve held up his hand.

"Son, just don't." Steve said. It didn't take to long to get the jet under our control. A costume, a glare, and a forceful tone was all it took to get them to listen to us.

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	36. Chapter 28: The Battle of New York

**Very long. 10/11 pages long on pages. 4,361 words.**

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**Chapter 28: The Battle of New York**

It seemed like no time had passed when we reached New York city, even though I spent most of the time pacing the length of the jet while trying to keep myself calm. I would have given anything to go back and sit on the Helicarrier; even though that probably would have made my anxiety worse. I most likely would have killed Fury, had I stayed. We were all nervous, and I was rethinking my decision of going with them.

"Alex you _need_ to sit down." Steve said. He was sitting there, fidgeting with a strap on one of the seats.

"I can't sit down. When I get nervous, I do two things; I either start pacing or start muttering to myself about how everything sucks, or both at once. With all the shit that's been going on, you're lucky I haven't started freaking out, and that's when things start getting really bad." I said, ranting.

"What's that like?" He asked. I stopped my pacing and turned to face him.

"Remember when Fury announced over the com that Phil was dead?" I asked. Steve nodded.

"That. It's like that." I said.

"What happened?" Agent Romanoff asked.

"Hysterical sobbing and I had to lead her down the hallway so she didn't bump into anything while she was trying to get out of my grip." Steve said. He turned to me, "You're a lot stronger than you look."

"We're there." Agent Barton said. Agent Romanoff turned on the com.

"Stark, we're heading north east." Agent Romanoff said. I jerked my head in her direction, finally getting out of my own head.

"What, did you stop for drive-thru?" He asked harshly, "Swing that park, I'm gonna lay 'em out for you." Before I knew what was happening the jet was crashing and we were on the ground. We ran outside the jet and onto the street. We stopped in the middle of the street, looking at the destruction that had already befallen the city. That's when we saw the Chitauri.

"Shit." I said, once I saw the airship. It looked like a giant worm, and it was bigger than a skyscraper. Everybody was gaping at it. As it passed Chitauri dropped out of it's sides and onto the buildings surrounding it.

"Stark, are you seeing this?" Steve asked.

"Seeing, still working on believing." Tony said, "Where's Banner? Has he shown up yet?"

"Banner?" Steve asked, sounding confused. Tony was clearly holding onto the hope that Dr. Banner would hold onto what he had said in the lab back on the Helicarrier.

"Just keep me posted." He said, before shutting off the com.

We dodged around some debris. Agent Romanoff, Agent Barton, and I kneeled behind a car, watching as the alien ships over head shot at buildings, dropped Chitauri and did everything they could to make it more difficult for us. Steve ran to meet us and did the same.

"We've got civilians trapped in there." Agent Barton said. Overhead the aliens were just making things worse.

"Loki." Steve said, looking at the ship that was racing across New York. More and more stuff was exploding and being shot at. There was so much fire. "Permission to barrel down there?" He asked. More Chitauri dropped and Agent Romanoff stood up and shot them. Agent Barton moved closer and she sat back down.

"We've got this. It's good, go." Agent Romanoff said.

"You think you can hold them off?" Steve asked.

"Captain, it would be my genuine pleasure." He said. Agent Barton stood up from behind the overturned taxi and shot one. An arrow went right through it's head and it fell. They started shooting at the Chitauri as Steve jumped over the side of the bridge.

"Just like Budapest all over again!" Agent Romanoff said.

"You and I remember Budapest very differently." Agent Barton replied. I didn't know what to think about that. I tried to be helpful during the fight, but the best I could do was shoot at the aliens and keep my focus on the aliens. I got backhanded across

Tony was messing with the worm beast, shooting at it and letting it follow him. It hit a building with it's tail, causing more rubble to fall.

"Well, we got it's attention." Tony said into the com. "What the hell was step two?" He asked. Nobody answered him.

The Chitauri were everywhere. At every street corner, waiting behind every car, they were doing whatever it took to take us down. It was getting worse and worse, and fighting them off was getting it to the point where we were running off of adrenaline and anger; and the battle had barely even begun.

While Agent Romanoff and Agent Barton were working hard to keep the aliens off themselves; I was busy trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. I was killing them, slowly, and it was gross because of all that black goo, but I wasn't entirely sure where we were heading with that. There was no goal in mind yet. They were streaming out of the portal, and there was nothing to stop it.

When I turned away from the aliens, I saw Steve trying to find his way back over to us. I got knocked right on my oblivious ass. I forced myself up and stabbed the aliens, wishing I knew more about what I was doing. Finally, he just jumped at them and used his shield to push the aliens out of the way. I smacked one of them with the back of the stolen gun and knocked it out of the way so I could get down there. Steve used his shield to keep them out of his way, Agent Romanoff was using the scepter she stole, and Agent Barton was shooting arrows at them. I had picked up a broken pole and was using it to stab the aliens. Slowly, we were getting a perimeter of our own, but it wasn't enough to stop them.

The Chitauri's numbers were dwindling, but they still seemed to have the upper hand on us. Before we knew what happened, lightning struck the remanning Chitauri down, and Thor dropped to the ground. He leaned heavily on an overturned car and got himself to his feet, walking towards us.

"What's the story upstairs?" Steve asked.

"The powers surrounding the cube is impenetrable." Thor answered.

"Thor is right, we gotta deal with these guys." Tony said into the com.

"How do we do this?" Agent Romanoff asked.

"As a team." Steve said, trying to take a place as the leader. Everybody except Thor found that as a satisfactory answer. Even the ones of us that didn't deal well with authority (e.i., me, Tony).

"I have unfinished business with Loki." Thor butted in.

"Yeah, get in line." Agent Barton said, fixing the tip of one of his arrows.

"Save it!" Steve snapped, getting their attention, "Loki's gonna keep this fight focused on us and that's what we need. Without him these things could run wild. We got Stark up top, he's gonna need us…" He stopped when we heard the sound of a motor. We all turned around to see Dr. Banner on a motorbike. He turned it off and got off the bike.

"So, this all seems horrible." Dr. Banner said, gesturing to the destruction. Everything around us was either on fire, overturned, or completely destroyed.

"I've seen worse." Agent Romanoff said.

"Sorry." Dr. Banner said a little guiltily. Thats when I remembered that they had been thrown in the same direction, and that the Hulk had caused a lot of damage on the Helicarrier.

"No, we could use a little worse." Agent Romanoff said.

"Stark, we got him, Banner, just like you said." Steve said into the com.

"Tell him to suit up. I'm bringing the party to you." Tony said. He came around a building in the suit and the giant worm ship followed him, hitting the buildings on its way.

"I—I don't see how that's a party." Agent Romanoff said. The giant worm creature/ship/thingy, started ghosting along the ground. It was maybe an inch off the ground and taking out everything in its way. Cars, bikes, buses; you name it, it was getting pushed out of the way. Dr. Banner started walking towards it.

"Dr. Banner, now might be a good time for you to get angry." Steve said, walking forward.

"That's my secret, Cap. I'm always angry." He said. The transformation into the Hulk was quick and seemingly effortless. He walked right up to the worm and punched it right in the face, being pushed back with it until it stopped. The worm was overturned, falling over us.

Fire rained from the creature that was impossible to describe; a machine and an animal, and absolutely fucking terrifying. Steve used his shield to cover himself and Agent Romanoff, I ducked behind a car with Agent Barton. The Chitauri on the buildings screamed. The Hulk roared triumphantly as the rest of us prepared our weapons and Tony lowered to the ground.

"Guys." Agent Romanoff said, drawing our attention to the portal.

"Call it, Captain." Tony said.

"Alright, listen up. Until we can close that portal up there, we're gonna use containment." He said, staring up at the portal. He turned back to face us, calling out orders. "Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or your turn it to ash."

"Wanna give me a lift?" Agent Barton asked.

"Right. Better clench up, Legolas." Tony said. He grabbed Agent Barton by the back of his shirt and flew up to the top of the building.

"Thor, you've gotta try and bottleneck that portal, slow them down. You've got the lightning, light the bastards up." Steve said. Thor did as he was told and he turned back to face the rest of us.

"You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here." He said. He turned to the Hulk, "And Hulk, smash." The Hulk grinned, before going off to do what he had been told. He jumped over 100 feet into the air, hitting the side of the building and grabbing onto a Chitauri. Then he jumped to the building across from it, and did the same.

"What about me?" I asked.

"I want you to stay out of this fight." He said.

"No." I said simply. He just sighed.

"You really don't like authority." He said. I nodded.

"Now let's kick their alien asses." I said.

The battle continued for a long time. It was getting harder and harder to fight. We were all exhausted and running out of ideas. It was starting to seem hopeless. I hadn't noticed that Steve had disappeared, until I turned around to find him missing. Surprisingly, there were no Chitauri at that moment. An eerie calm was falling over the Battle and I felt like something was wrong. I looked over at Agent Romanoff.

"Do you feel that?" I asked, my spine prickling.

"What?" She asked.

"Nothing. Nothing…where'd they all go." I asked, doing a full 360. She looked around, finding nothing herself.

"I don't know. But this can't last long." She said. She was right, just looking overhead showed that more and more of those things were coming out of the portal. But they weren't coming our way.

"Maybe the—" I started. Then I heard a loud noise around a corner, it wasn't an explosion, but a loud noise like a crash. I was confused, but I didn't think much of it. I just thought it was a Chitauri or two. "I—I'm going to go see what that was." I pointed in that direction before hurriedly running that way.

When I got there, I only saw a few stray Chitauri. Those were easy enough to take out, three bullets. I heard a noise behind me, and when I turned around I got knocked down by one of those blasts. It hit my shoulder and I got the wind knocked out of my with the back end of one of those staffs. I shot it with the handgun, without looking at it. I moved to my feet, but stopped when I heard footsteps and saw a shadow loom over me. I raised my head slowly and was shocked by who I found.

"Alexandra." He said.

"How do you know my name?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was stupid, "I have heard the others address you." I rolled my eyes and groaned as I got to my feet.

"Stupid question." I muttered. He didn't look very threatening without the scepter. "What makes you think I won't kill you where you stand?" I asked, ready to lunge at him. He materialized the scepter. "That's why." I stated calmly, taking a step away.

"I am not here to hurt you—just to give you a warning." He said.

"Why should I believe anything you say?" I asked, skeptical for a good reason.

"Because I am here to give you a final chance." He stated.

"What is it?" I asked, wondering what it could possibly be. My biggest question was why he was addressing me, not one of the others. He must have assumed that I could convince them of something.

"Give up. Give up while you stand a chance." He said.

"And let you—God of Assholes and Morons—take over the entire world?" I asked. I was digging my own grave, and I knew it. But I was missing that gene that told me when to shut the hell up, so I didn't stop.

"You have quite a temper." He said with a laugh. I rolled my eyes.

"Damn right." I was pissing off a man that could very well murder me where I stood. But because I was Alexandra the Great, I had to edge him on even more. Now I understand why my friends gave me that nickname. I was an Imbecullin. I was a freaking Imbecullin because I was so freaking stupid.

"Alexandra, I am giving you one final choice. And you are pushing it." He said. I didn't care. I just didn't care. There was no point, there was no guarantee that anything would go my way.

"I know. But here's the thing. I confuse you. Don't I?" I asked, starting to understand. He didn't say anything, "It scares you. That you don't know who I am—what I can do. You really know nothing about me."

"I am giving you a warning." He said slowly. I was pushing my luck.

"No you aren't. You're trying to get inside my head. You're trying to figure me out. When you destroyed the S.H.I.E.L.D center, I panicked and hid. You thought I was a coward. Didn't you?" I asked. I didn't wait for him to say anything. "Then, once Stuttgart happened. I wasn't one. Ever since then, I stepped up; and you don't understand how."

"Alexandra…" He warned slowly.

"The thing is. I don't exactly know any of this either. I have never stood up for anybody—even for myself. The only time I did that was against a kid that would have otherwise killed me. I let myself get pushed out of a third story window because I didn't want to stand up to my Uncle. But I stood up to _you_." I said.

That was the one mystery about myself that even I didn't know. He was freaked out by the fact that I was unpredictable. I was freaked out because I was by the fact that I wasn't acting like myself. The _one_ time I stood up for myself, was against Aubrey. That ended in me basically rethinking my entire life and everything about me.

He didn't say anything—didn't do anything. Just watched me. He was trying to figure me out, when that was something that I didn't even want to do. If I could confuse myself at times, what made him think that he could do it?

"You think you can understand me, when even I can't." I said, starting to understand what I had to do. "And I don't give a fuck. I don't give a fuck because you don't matter. I can flat out tell you how this is going to end. You lose. We win. Where I'm from, where I've lived, these are all movies. You've lost before. And you'll lose again. If you won, there wouldn't be a movie. Villains don't win, Loki; you lose. It's your nature; the very nature of your being."

"That sounds a lot like what Agent Coulson said to me in his final moments." Loki taunted.

"Yeah—that's why I got along with him so well." I said, "We both knew how this would end. We win, you lose. Well, hope you enjoy hell jackass." Before I knew what happened, he was gone. I didn't care. I was just happy that he had left. It didn't really hit me what I had just done until I got back, and thankfully there were very few Chitauri when I got back.

"What happened?" Agent Romanoff asked.

"I…just had a mostly civil conversation with the man we're supposed to be fighting against." I said plainly, blinking to see if that would either wake me up or knock me out of my daze. Agent Romanoff stared at me in shock. I turned to face her. "What the hell is wrong with me?"

"Honey, I don't think I can answer that."

Around then, the battle picked up again. Every once and a while, things would calm down a bit, maybe even entirely, before starting up again at full force. It was getting worse and worse and eventually that pattern stopped.

"Is this what working for S.H.I.E.L.D is like?" I asked, "Working your ass off against cosmic threats?" She shook her head.

"Not usually. Depends on the job." She said, shooting a Chitauri with its own scepter.

"This job seems like it sucks." I said. I gave up trying to stab the Chitauri and shooting it with the handgun. The battle, and trying to make small talk while killing things, went on for a while. I learned a lot about S.H.I.E.L.D, guns, poker, and how to create explosives.

**Note to self: **Remember to ask Agent Romanoff to show me how to make explosives (and to a lesser extent how to actually shoot a gun and play poker)

It wasn't much longer until Steve reappeared from wherever he had gone, or whatever he had been doing. Both Agent Romanoff and I pointed our weapons at him, thinking he was one of the Chitauri. Once we saw that it was him, we relaxed a bit.

"Captain, none of this is gonna mean a damn thing if we don't close that portal." Agent Romanoff said.

"Our biggest guns couldn't touch it." Steve pointed out.

"Well, maybe it's not about guns." Agent Romanoff said, looking up.

"You wanna get up there, you're gonna need a ride." Steve said.

"I got a ride." She said, gesturing up, "I could use a lift though." She looked at the shield.

"Are you sure about this?" Steve asked, bracing the shield.

"Yeah, it's gonna be fun." She said, though she didn't sound convinced. She took a running start and jumped on the shield and she jumped to grab one of the hover boards.

"What do we do now?" I asked, once we were sure that she was ok.

"I don't know. We wait and we fight them off." Steve said. I sighed.

"You know, I thought when we actually got into a battle, things would be a little more interesting. Now, all that's happened is that I've been shot at, shot, and emotionally scared. This sucks." I said. He nodded.

"Battle's not exactly fun."

"Well, I learned that now." I said, "But there's got to be something we can do. What about S.H.I.E.L.D? What about Fury? When are we going to get some information?" I asked. He shook his head.

"Alex, I just don't know. We have to wait. That's all we can do." He said. As soon as he said that, more Chitauri appeared. "Scratch that. We fight."

And that's what we did. We fought, and fought, and fought. I was slipping up, not able to catch myself, not able to block attacks. The bulletproof vest wasn't helping as much as I needed it to. I had cuts, burns, and bruises. It was getting worse and worse and those scepter burns hurt worse than a bullet ever could. I had run out of bullets and was in the middle of using a rifle as if it was a baseball bat.

At some point, Thor had joined us, since nothing was working with the portal. Steve got shot down by one of the scepter blasts. Thor helped him to his feet.

"You ready for another bout?" Thor asked.

"What, you gettin' sleepy?" Steve asked.

"I can close it! Can anybody hear me? I can shut the portal down!" Agent Romanoff called into the com.

"Do it!" Steve yelled.

"No, wait!" Tony yelled.

"Stark, these things are still coming!" Steve objected.

"I got a nuke coming in, it's gonna blow in less than a minute." Tony said, we watched as he flew towards the missile, "And I know just where to put it."

"Stark, you know that's a one way trip." Steve stated. He didn't say anything. I took a deep breath, then spoke into the com.

"Mr. Stark—Tony, if you do this. You might not make it back. God knows what's waiting for you on the other side." I said. The others turned to look at me. "Most likely, the suit's going to die as soon as you go through. _Nothing_, on that suit can withstand the vacuum of space for long."

"Well, I don't have much of a choice, do I kid?" He asked.

"Not really." I stated, my voice quivering a bit.

"The world's gone to shit and it's the only chance we've got." He said.

"But—" I started, until he cut me off. _But you'll die, _I had meant to say. By the look on his face when I shot him a panicked look, I could tell that Steve knew what I was going to say.

"Alex, they're about to Nuke Manhattan." He said, "We don't have a choice. There is nowhere else I can throw this that won't hurt somebody."

"This'll end the battle." I said.

"It should." He said. After that, he turned off the com.

"He's not coming back through. Is he?" I asked Steve. He didn't say anything. We didn't know anything.

"Close the portal." Steve said, once Tony was through and hadn't come back. After a moment, he fell through, right before the portal was closed. "Son of a gun."

"He's not slowing down." Thor pointed out. He started whirling the hammer, as if he would use it to slow Tony down, but before he could do anything the Hulk snagged him out of the air and dropped him to the ground next to us.

Steve ripped off the face mask, but he didn't move. I sat down next to him, to see what was going to happen. Tony didn't even look like he was breathing. After a moment, the Hulk yelled. It was enough to startle him awake.

"What the hell? What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me?" He said, his eyes darting around like a madman.

"Nobody kissed you." I said, "The Hulk…" I gestured in his direction, "Did some roaring thing…or…whatever. Good god I'm tired."

"We won." Steve said.

"Alright. Yay. Alright. Good job, guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day." He said, "Have you ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."

"We're not finished yet." Thor said.

"And then shawarma after?" Tony asked.

"Considering the fact that shawarma involves food, I think nobody's going to say no to that." I said. After everybody was able to get to our feet, the next challenge was getting up to the penthouse without destroying anything else.

It was hard, but we mostly managed to do it. I mean, everything was already destroyed. There were going to have to do major renovations anyway, so it wasn't much of a problem.

Getting the Hulk up there was the problem. Yet we did it anyway. Tony _will_ need to install a new elevator though. And we had to use the stairs to get back down.

When Loki woke up from the Hulk-Smash induced coma, we were the first thing he saw. Well, Agent Barton's bow was the first thing he saw.

"If it's all the same to you," He said with a sigh, "I'll have that drink now." The Hulk just growled at him.

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	37. Chapter 29: Shawarma

**Short chapter, mostly for fun. Chapter 30 ****_will_**** be the last chapter. After that, Taken from Translation starts.**

**You can skip Taken from Translation if you absolutely have to, but considering the fact that it does include/will include her teaming up with both Darcy Lewis and Peter Parker (She meets Darcy first, and then they have to team up with Peter Parker). My friend wanted me to write her a story about her being Venom, and I agreed to do it. So she's most likely going to write everything from her POV for that story/the plot and I'm going to go in after her adding the others and doing damage control.**

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**Chapter 29: Shawarma**

After S.H.I.E.L.D took Loki from us, Tony decided that we really would get shawarma. He took off the suit and gave Dr. Banner clothes. Then we went to the shawarma place.

Immediately after the battle.

The people running the restaurant looked at us like we were crazy, but they weren't about to say no since we had just saved the world, and Tony gave them a lot of money to pay for the food and the damages. They said they would have given us the food for free, considering the fact that we did just save the world, but Tony paid them anyway. Before face-planting on the table, Steve mumbled something about tipping them. If $100 doesn't count as a tip, I don't know what does.

We sat there in complete silence, eating shawarma and trying not to fall asleep in our food, while the people behind us were cleaning up the rubble from the battle that was mostly our fault.

Now that's good sportsmanship. Had I been them, I probably would have just slammed the door in our faces. But they gave us food and were nice about it despite the fact that they were really busy cleaning up.

After we finished eating, we sat there in silence for a while. Then we tried to make some small talk. I finally got Agent Romanoff to finish explaining how to make explosives to me; despite the fact that all the guys felt uncomfortable with how much detail she told me about how to create a Nuke.

After that, we tried to help them clean a little bit. I think we made things worse, and they told us to stop. Tony was just giving them money at that point, telling them not to tell anybody certain things (ei, the identities of people that the world already didn't know about.

It was fun. I like shawarma. I told Tony that if Fury didn't kill us, then we'd need to do that again. After that, we had to go back to S.H.I.E.L.D; where unfortunately, I saw some very familiar faces.

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	38. Chapter 30: How I learned the truth

**Well, this is ****the end of Lost in Translation.**

**I have the first few chapters of Taken from Translation in the works, so expect those to come pretty soon.**

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**Chapter 30: How I learned the truth**

As soon as we walked on the Helicarrier, which had been forced to land due to damages; I knew I was screwed.

"You do realize that you fucked us all over!" Robert yelled, standing in front of Fury and Agent Hill. My mind immediately went into 'Crawl in a hole in die' mood; because I knew I was screwed.

"Not this." I asked, "Anything but this." The others turned to face me.

"Alex, who are they?" Agent Romanoff asked.

"…My cousin and his girlfriend." I said reluctantly. "In other words, my entire family knows what's going on. I'm most likely getting murdered within the next few weeks and I might as well start writing my will." That's when they saw me. Robert looked so pissed.

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!" He yelled, shaking my shoulders. "It's S.H.I.E.L.D! For God's sake, it's S.H.I.E.L.D!"

"How the fuck is this my fault?!" I yelled back.

"It's not." Dina said, "If anything, it's your Dad's fault."

"He knows where you were. The second I said internship, he knew I was lying. I told him that I didn't know where you were. But to be honest, we all knew." Robert said, "We're more involved in this than you know."

"Clearly, we are. As soon as I get this shit settled, you two owe me a pretty big explanation." I said. Fury walked over towards us, looking even angrier than Robert.

"Your cousin is a pain in the ass." Fury said.

"I agree with that, sir. But can somebody explain what the hell is going on?" I asked, "I think we're all still exhausted from the battle."

"Yes, and I will explain in great detail…after the debriefing." Fury said. Nobody complained, because nobody had the energy to complain. The debriefing was quick, and we all got cleaned up. I had never had that many ace bandages, bandaids, and rolls of gauze on me before. That was when Fury sat me and my cousins down to explain.

"Not long into the battle, your cousin and Regina—" He started.

"Dina." She corrected.

"Dina." Fury finished, "And like I was saying, not long into the battle, we were forced to land the Helicarrier. Once we landed, these two showed up demanding answers as to where you were." Fury said.

"My Dad, immediately knew it was a cover up when I said internship. We all knew it was S.H.I.E.L.D, even though you didn't tell us." Robert said.

"How did they know? We're not…" I started, looking at the files Fury had from a distance. I looked up at Robert. "We're supposed to be here." I stated. He nodded.

"I owe you an explanation." He said.

"Yes, yes you do." I said, "And I want the explanation right now."

Robert looked at Fury, "Do you think you can help me with this? Hell, you're more involved in this than I ever was." He said. I glared at Fury.

"You know what, maybe you should explain that first." I said.

"How are you involved?" I asked.

"Alex, this world is more complicated than it seems. You're more involved then you think you are." He said, "I'm more involved in this than I'd like to be."

"How?" I asked, when he didn't offer any further explanation.

"Your Father used to work for S.H.I.E.L.D in the late 90s. He had just gotten married to your Mother, and that was all he could talk about. He was a good man, he followed all the rules, he never did anything wrong. He was a good agent." Fury unpinned something from the file, "Agent Mackenzie Harbor of S.H.I.E.L.D, Level 6." He threw me the badge.

"Oh my god." I said.

"Her Father," He gestured at Dina, "Also worked for S.H.I.E.L.D." She flashed me the badge she had in her hand. "Then, it was around October 2000; you were a couple months old. He, Don Rio, and a few other agents were sent on a mission to deal with a gang in Brooklyn. It turned out to be The Seven. Back then, it was all Harbor men. Your Uncle, Trent Harbor, had been the leader at the time. Two men were killed in the fight, and the rest got away injured."

"You sent him after his family." I stated.

"Yes, we did." Fury said, "And I will admit that. We promised him—a lot like we promised you, that we wouldn't go after his family—or that we wouldn't use him to go after them. We had been running low on men at the time, and we had to use him and Don Rio for that mission."

"I remember that fight." Robert said, "Sam and I were there."

"Yes, thats one of the reasons why they were so angry with us. Because we threatened the lives of two children. The Agent in charge of that mission told them that he could and would force them to kill their entire family if they stepped out of line again—by the time it was learned what he did, they had already snapped and gone rouge. The agent was fired, but we weren't able to get them back on their side." Fury said.

I nodded, "I can understand why."

"We could as well. He threatened the lives of 3 children." Fury stated.

"But if we belong here, what happened to send us there?" I asked. Fury looked at Robert.

"This one's on you." He said.

"When you were little, you were absolutely adorable." Robert said, "But you were a pain in the ass. You were violent, dangerous, volatile; and you were only 4. For reasons your parents wouldn't tell us, you were basically a time bomb. We didn't know when you'd go off."

"You scared a lot of people. A lot people wanted you. We didn't know why. Around the time you turned 4; we knew we'd have to do something." Dina said. Robert took a deep breath.

"You were 4 when Sam died. Remember?" Robert asked. I shook my head.

"Not really. Everything was pretty hazy up until I was 5ish. I mean, I can remember stuff, but barely." I said. He nodded.

"Well, Sam and I were born 7 years apart. I was 8, he was 15. Do you want to know why my Dad killed him?" Robert asked. I was a little taken back, we knew that his Dad had killed Sam, but we never spoke of that. It was a family thing; we didn't want to talk about the time his brother was murdered by his own Father.

"Y—Yeah. What happened?" I asked.

"When you were little—like I said, you were violent. Your Mom left, to keep you safe. Your Dad, kept you as close as he could. He basically smothered you. The people that wanted you dead, were like scientists and doctors and enemies of S.H.I.E.L.D that knew how freaky your DNA was."

"What's weird about my DNA?" I asked.

"Well, as we told you when we put you on the Tesseract Project that there was something odd about your DNA, radiation that was found to be very similar to ones that we had encountered before." Fury said, "We're still working on figuring out what that was."

"See, cause of that, they didn't want people to know about you." Dina said.

"We were taught, to never talk about you. We were told if anybody asked about you, if anybody knew about you, to run away." Robert finished.

"But?" I asked.

"Sam was 15; he was going through the rebellious phase. He didn't listen to anything Dad said. One day, somebody approached him, asking for information, offering him money. Well, what 15 year old doesn't want money; he told him everything." Robert said quietly, "The next day, we got attacked. We all got pretty banged up, and they managed to take you. Dad found out Sam was the one that told them, and he killed Sam."

"What happened?" I asked.

"We don't exactly know. All we know is that they deemed you to have some alien DNA in you. Your Dad took the records they kept, but we couldn't find anything out from them." Robert said, "That's when they decided that it was time to keep us all safe." He looked at Fury.

"A—Alien DNA?" I asked.

"I wouldn't worry too much about that. They must have messed up the odd radiation for alien DNA." Robert said. _Must Have_.

"During your Father—and her Father's time at S.H.I.E.L.D, they worked in two different positions. They were both field agents and scientists. One of the projects they had played a vital part in was Project Kane. Project Kane was one of our early attempts to find extraterrestrial lifeforms." Fury said.

"What does that have to do with the whole universe thing?" I asked.

"During a test, it was learned that universes could be 'hacked' so to speak, and he was adamant that he'd be the first one to figure out how to do that. So, when he realized how much danger you really were in, he broke into S.H.I.E.L.D, stole the files, cleared everything onto a flash drive, cleared it from all of the computers, and stole the technology that had been used during Project Kane."

"How did they not stop him?" I asked.

"Because he was very high up in S.H.I.E.L.D before he left. He was good friends with myself and Alexander Pierce before he went rouge." Fury responded.

"Alexander?" I asked, "Why do I get the feeling that I'm named after that guy?" I asked.

"Because you are." Robert answered for me, "He told me that much. Apparently the guy's also your God-Father."

"Yes, he is." Fury said, "I believe, if your Father didn't burn them, both myself and Alexander Pierce should be in several photos. Including half of his wedding album."

"I'll be hunting for that when I get home." I said.

"I do not doubt that you will." Fury said, "But one thing I'd like to know is how he accomplished the impossible and managed to do that."

"That, I don't think anyone will ever know. It's in his head. Unless…unless S.H.I.E.L.D can manage to read his thoughts, you'll never know how he did what he did." I said, "It's not like he'll tell me."

"There's another thing he's not telling you." Robert said, "He disappeared." I turned to Fury.

"Did you take him?" I asked, giving him the benefit of the doubt. He didn't say anything. "You did!"

"Alex, we had no other option." Fury said.

"Yes you did. You said you wouldn't!" I objected.

"We need to know what he did!" Fury yelled, slamming his hands down on the table. "This might be everything we need to protect Earth from another attack like this."

"You lied." I said, "You took him in. I'm going to die."

"What do you mean?" Fury asked.

"I mean Uncle Trent will literally kill me." I said.

"She's not wrong." Robert said, "He's most likely going to make everything hell for all of us. Her, most of all."

"We need him to be let go, otherwise, things are going to go bad pretty fast." Dina said.

"I'm afraid I can't do that. Once we figure out what we need to—if we ever do, the council is going to require that he gets handed over to the authorities." Fury said.

"He'll go to prison!" I objected.

"Alex, we can do whatever it takes to support you. But he can't be on the loose any longer." Fury said, "We can offer you protection from your family."

"I'm done. I'm fucking done." I said, getting up. "We're leaving." I snapped my hand in Robert and Dina's direction. "Come on."

"You can't just leave." Agent Hill said, stopping me at the exit of the room.

"I need time, before my Uncle figures out what happens." I said, "If you let me go, I'll get that time." She stepped aside. I threw my bag to Robert, and gave Buster's leash to Dina.

"Wait for me by the subway station. I need to handle some stuff first." I said. I walked back to where the others were waiting.

"How'd it go?" Steve asked.

"Not well." I said, "I found out that my Father and Don Rio worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. Some agent pissed them off and they left. People threatened me, they stole stuff, created the alternate universe; we still don't know _how _he did it. And it turns out Fury took in my Dad during Stuttgart, so my family is most likely going to kill me." They all looked a little shocked.

"What?" Tony asked.

"It was fun—not really—while it lasted. It was nice meeting you guys. I'm going home to write my will before my Uncle finds out." I said.

"Can't S.H.I.E.L.D protect you?" Dr. Banner asked.

"Yeah, but I can't exactly trust them." I said, "I'm going to have to figure this out on my own, until my jackass Uncle understands that this isn't my fault—which probably isn't going to happen. And beat the shit out of Loki for me, before he gets taken back to Asgard."

After that, I left. We walked back to my apartment. They headed home, and I stayed by myself.

"I screwed myself over." I stated, lying flat on my couch. Buster nuzzled my head, and licked my face. "I screwed everyone I know over." Buster jumped off the couch and wandered into the kitchen. "I screwed everything over."

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